First announcements: Date & Location

 

It is still almost three months away, but preparations for our annual birthday bash, better known as 'SellaBration' are in full swing. Today we can happily announce that our second anniversary party will be held on Friday August 15, at Amsterdam's legendary concert hall Paradiso.  The event will be called 'SellaBration '08' and will have room for close to 2,000 music-lovers.


Never change a winning combination. Last year's SellaBration '07 was an event that we will never forget. Part of the reason for the success was the fantastic location and the fact that we had a full house. A full house on stage, but also with people attending. We did look at other cities and venues, but decided to settle for Amsterdam & Paradiso, mainly because we want to build something of a tradition. It is a city we love and call home and a venue that should be on any artist's wish list to perform there. Well, a number of SellaBand artists will get the opportunity to play this fantastic stage on August 15, 2008.


Cubworld playing at SellaBration '07

As many of you will be aware, we've had three Paradiso events before; two in the Small Room (also known as The Upstairs) and one in the Main Hall. One little detail of SellaBration '08 we can already give away: negotiations with Paradiso are well under way for us to be able to use both rooms and thus have access to two stages! 


SellaBand Tribune 85, due on Tuesday June 10, will be a so called 'SellaBration Special'. That's when the line-up will be announced, and we hope to be able to elaborate on some other special activities. By then we will also be able to inform you how you can get your hands on this event. All we can say is: we aim to top last years' event!

 

For now we only wanted to share the location with our community as early as we possibly could, because we have received a lot of e-mails from people who would like to make their travel arrangements as early as possible. Last year we had people from 22 countries attending the show. Can we top this? Let's see. In case you are worried about tickets; there are plenty of them. You show us your plane ticket and we will put you on our guest list!

 

You can book your hotel here

 

Still Going Strong:

Radio Orange

 

From time to time we invite one of our long time friends to give us an update on their latest achievements and whereabouts. It is a column for a platform for SellaBand artists who have been with us for a while and have not been featured in the Tribune for a while. The road to 50K may be long and winding, we salute those who are still going strong regardless. This week: Radio Orange


How are things with Radio Orange?

“By now we have been ‘Radio Active’ on SellaBand for about a year and it sure feels good. We gradually are climbing up to the base camp at 25k. After that we hope for a smooth but accelerated climb right to the summit at 50k. We sure enjoy being part of the SellaBand experience. After this first exciting year we embrace the SellaBand philosophy more than ever. It’s really amazing how many intriguing music loving folks we have met along the way. It feels like we virtually toured all continents of this small planet. Currently, some 600 folks have invested in RO. With many of them we have frequent contacts in various forms, mostly in silico, sometimes even in person. We enjoy chatting with our believers mostly about music and lyrics. Some believers tuned in real close and provided us with an elaborate view on our artistic work.


 

Sometimes it helped us to take a certain song or lyric to higher grounds. We’ve come up with all sorts of actions hoping to attract the community’s attention and to expand our flock of believers. Particularly well received was the personalized Love Song. The idea was both simple but strong: buy at least one Radio Orange part and you’ll receive an authentic RO song personalized by us dubbing in the live-song name of your ‘loved one’. It was a big success, but it almost drove us nuts. Hundreds of different names needed to be sung and delicately budded in. But it was all worth it. We received numerous reports of love that was (re)-ignited by this musical surprise. Moreover, we launched the so-called “the double or double action”. Obviously, we enjoyed shooting our newsflash item: “This is Radio Orange with the news”. We feel that these and other initiatives lifted us right up to where we are today, firmly in the higher regions of the chart.”

 

Anything exciting going on?

“Absolutely! We just finalized a wonderful recording session with Lucia Iman in our ‘Spitsbergen studio’. We recorded and fully remixed two RO songs. While we speak a brand new version of “Terminal One” featuring the intriguing voice of Lucia Iman is available from our profile page.  Soon also a second track called “My Angel” will be added here. Lucia is an extraordinary gifted musician. She added some sort of wonder to our songs that can’t really be described, it’s dazzling. We are looking forward to work with her again. And sure, the doors of our studio are always open to work with any other SellaBand artist, just let us know!” 

 

Almost halfway in budget now, are you guys ready for the studio?

“Actually, we are always ready to hit the studio. For more than 10 years now our musical work is focused on Studio Spitsbergen. Recently, we upgraded this studio with new and old high-end equipment that we share with Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg). It enabled us to create a fully fledged recording studio ranging from fully digital (computerized) recording machines right down to them good old 24 tracks machines. Importantly, we upgraded our monitoring room to highest level. The new pre-amps give us (and others) goose bumps. But still, we could also decide to go to another studio. It’s not only good equipment that counts. We will always keep our eyes wide open for inspiring new surroundings. Couscous makes an interesting change from rice.”

 

Do you plan to be the third Dutch band to raise $50,000 on SellaBand?

“We know for sure that Radius will be ‘the next top model from the Netherlands’. They put an unbelievable amount of effort in their quest for reaching the 50k. They deserve this bronze medal. We are also eager to reach the Sellaband finish, but why in a hurry? Imagine that you don’t have to look anymore for new Believers. That you don’t have to worry about a sudden withdrawal (Why? How can anybody be that cruel? ;-) ) Imagine days without brainstorming sessions that produce this unique new brilliant idea about finding new believers. Life without our daily SellaBand juice will turn into hell. But in the end we will make that CD with a lot of good songs, the right sound and great artwork. SellaBand will spread the album around the globe and is this not what living is really all about?”


Lucia Iman in Studio Spitsbergen


What else do you have in store for 2008?

“We will bring new songs, smart campaigns, interesting ‘collabs” and of course a new season of “This is Radio Orange with the News”. Meanwhile we will be working vigorously on bringing this all to stage. We are eight musicians charged with an almost sickly inclination to find the right combination between musical perfection and primary emotions. That’s not easy. We do the best we can. What more can we do? Ok. Music speaks louder than words. Go and listen to “Terminal One” on our profile page. You will hear Lucia Iman and Radio Orange and it will make your day!”

 



Over $2,000,000 Invested on SellaBand!

 

Facts & Figures

You didn’t think we would let the moment slip by unnoticed, did you? We are now North of the 2 million mark, meaning that over $2,000,000 has been invested in unsigned talent on SellaBand since our launch in August 2006. And this is the total amount after the Refunds have been deducted. Time for a little celebration, we think...


And we celebrate the 2,000,000K with some facts and figures. We all know that SellaBand is now 21 months old and also 21 artists have raised the full $50,000. This adds up to $1,050,000 (21 x 50K) meaning that more money has been invested in Recording Artists than in artists on the road to 50K. Good or bad, perhaps something to be discussed on the Forum? Fact is that thanks to your generosity, SellaBand can inject over 1 millions crispy American dollars into the Global Music Industry...


Provided all the selected artists will release their albums as planned, the SellaBand label will have manufactured over 100,000 albums before the end of 2009. This is quite a significant number as any new independent music label will be able to confirm. Now, selling all these albums is a different story, as you sure can imagine. As promised, we give you an overview every month of the Limited Editions that are still available. Here is the latest score: 

Artist                    Available
Nemesea                 2473

Maitreya*                2769

Julia Marcell*          2937

Second Person       3356

Cubworld                 3418

Lily Vasquez           3696

Mandyleigh Storm 3763

Clemence                3942

 


The next two albums that are coming up are Solid Tube (listening session planned for May 27) and Vegas Dragons (listening session planned in the week commencing June 2.) Two more albums have now been scheduled: Confused5 and T-ka. The final masters have arrived and more details will be announced soon.


SellaBand has come quite far in the past 21 months, let alone the last 12 months. As a comparison: one year ago this week, we proudly welcomed Lily Vasquez as our fifth Recording Artists and had just passed the $750K mark...


A picture of JohanV showcasing our 21 Recording Artists at a Music Seminar in Helsinki, Finland on May 16.
 

*    Both these albums will be sent out to the Believers next week.

 

Free Download Chart


Giving away (some) of the recorded music for free has always been part of our concept. In fact, the share of the advertising revenue allocated to the artists and their Believers is based on this principle...


Right now three songs from every SellaBand album are available as free downloads on the artist shop pages. We want to create more awareness for this via (viral) marketing campaigns, but also invite our community to tell all their friends and family that there is some fantastic music available through SellaBand. For free!


Currently there are 24 tracks available as free downloads, from 8 different artists. The split of the advertising revenues between Artists and Believers is based on the market share of the free downloads of the participating artists. From now on we will publish a montly Chart of most downloaded Artists -and aim to have a real time chart for the revamped site- but we kick off the proceedings with the Top 5 of most downloaded Artists on SellaBand.com, based on their three free tracks:


1)    Nemesea                (35%)

2)    Cubworld                (21%)

3)    Second Person      (21%)

4)    Clemence                 (8%)

5)    Mandyleigh Storm  (4%)


The numbers relate to unique downloads on SellaBand, not including the artists’ Believers who received all the music as free downloads anyway. Some may claim this is not fair, since some albums have been available longer than others. But hey, we have to begin somewhere and this is the results of the first 10 months of Free Downloads on SellaBand, so this is what we can publish. And anyway, YOU can make a difference and change the results of the artist(s) you support by letting your world know that all this music is available on this platform. We know we will be doing the same in the months to come...



Q + A: Bonnie(1)

 

South America is one of the continents where SellaBand has yet to gain some traction. Fortunately this hasn’t stopped dozens of great bands from this area to sign up anyway. Take Bonnie for example, a band from Uruguay with a mission to reach out to the world. Singer Sofi answers the questions...


Who are Bonnie?

“Bonnie is a group of five friends that met in highschool and always shared their passion for music. We are a real band!”

 

What made you join SellaBand?

“Since the very beginning Lucho, Tati, Jero and myself have been writing songs that suddenly became a huge success in our environment. That’s how we realized that we were capable of writing songs that people would like and consume. One day, Lucho discoverd Sellaband by chance in one of his google researches and got fascinanted by the concept. A CD entirely financed by fans was exactly what we needed. We never hesitated.”


You're around $3,000 in budget on SellaBand. How tough is it to keep the right spirit on your way to 50k?

“Well its actually not that hard. Its just a matter of points of view. If you see the 3k as a percentage in 50k, well yeah we have a long way ahead of us, but for us, its not only about raising the money to make an album. 3k means that people from the Mecas of the music industry are actually listening to our music, paying attention and even investing money in a new band from a far away country they probably don’t even know how to pronounce (or where it is hehe). For us, that’s totally surreal.  The incredible SellaBand community makes this all worth it. We have a lot of fun here! We made collaboration songs with incredible artists, we recieve feedback from all around the world, met incredible people that have faith in us, supports us and help us to grow as a band. Today I couldn’t imagine Bonnie without SellaBand.”

(Cont. column 3)