This Week We Heard

Relevant and inspiring happenings tied into music and media

Corona’s SunSets Festival brought the heat last weekend

Having already held successful parties in Italy, Ibiza, China, Chile, Mexico and UK, the Corona Sunsets Festival finally made its way to our western shores last weekend with revellers partying away to the sounds of Flight Facilities, Nina Las Vegas, George Maple, Crooked Colours, Hayden James and Basenji to name a few. The reported 35 degree temperature at Fremantle’s South Beach, WA didn’t deter the at-capacity crowd despite the heat as the acts performed aubades in front of a brightly ornamented and aptly impressive giant star-like lightshow installation as the sun set. Check out some of the photos here.

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Studiotime: helping artists find their dream recording booth the world over

We’ve been waiting for this idea to see the light of day: finally musicians around the world rejoice as the options to book studio time and record your next demo become ever more interesting. If you’re on tour abroad and require a rehearsal space or an engineer for the tracks you’re writing on the road, Studiotime allows you to find studios in your city and explore new ones the world over – it’s essentially the Airbnb of recording studios. Aiming to help connect recording artists with studio space, the site invites users to browse studio listings, complete with photos, descriptions and visitor comments to find your dream recording space.

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MMAD and their amazing talent deliver a great song and campaign ahead of Xmas

MMAD (Musicians Making A Difference) is the foundation charity partner of the Australian advertising industry’s not-for-profit philanthropic foundation Unltd. Working with 10 young disadvantaged youths enrolled in the organisation and along with the help of Universal Music Australia, MMAD have created a campaign ahead of the Christmas holidays centred around a song written by the group with the aid of established artists (among them Tuka from Thundamentals) to raise awareness for the cause using the #MMAD4U hashtag. Both the team at MMAD and the young musicians who are enrolled in the organisation are as equally talented as they are altruistic – great song and campaign!

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Lynx Black stages multi-sensory performance with Australian artist Seekae

Unilever has teamed up with youth network Vice to launch the new Lynx Black fragrance in the local market with an experiential activation that saw Future Classic artist Seekae perform to a pitch black room at Sydney’s Seymour Centre. The event took place October 30th with the video footage captured and co-produced by Exit Films and the team at Noisey having just been released as a piece of branded content that has already amassed a healthy amount of views. The live show took place in complete darkness with the Australian trio performing to a full audience deprived of their visual senses and captured entirely on cutting-edge infrared, thermal and night vision cameras.

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UMG & Foxtel can’t resolve their issues; YouTube shrugs its shoulders

A dispute between Universal Music Australia and Foxtel has extended several weeks now, with music videos from the world’s most commercial and mainstream acts banned from appearing on any of the networks owned music channels. Missed opportunities in royalties and programming confusion could possibly be an issue respectively for both the major record label and TV network; whether the vacuum left from the pop-stars’ no-show has left any viewers troubled is uncertain, a strong call-to-action for independent musicians to rush their content over to Foxtel it should be. Meanwhile, as both YouTube and Facebook know well, everyone continues to watch music videos online.

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R.I.P. Rdio; slightly more room in a crowded and competitive market space

Struggling online music-streaming service Rdio’s has officially shut shop and is set to file for bankruptcy, with Pandora buying up their key assets for a tidy sum of US$75M. The latest casualty in the rough-and-tumble digital landscape wars leaves behind a substantial debt to various music rights holders, including Sony BMG and Shazam. While the deal is not yet inked, Pandora won’t be laying claim to Rdio’s operations, instead focusing on the technology and talent. Over the course of a steady shutdown for Rdio, Pandora could likely create its own on-demand streaming to bolster its existing radio-style service, in the hopes of crushing competitor Spotify.

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