This Week We Heard

Relevant and inspiring happenings tied into music and media

Safe & Sound presents: Sound Connections @ EMC 2015

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Nov

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Safe & Sound is hosting a world-first “speed dating” event for music producers called Sound Connections as part of this year’s EMC Masterclass program! It’s a unique networking event that unites up & coming artists with established mentors, giving aspiring producers the opportunity to rub shoulders with leading musicians and connect with the industry experts they look up to. With a high-profile roster of talent already confirmed including Yolanda Be Cool, Slumberjack, Kid Kenobi, Royalston and Tom Piper (plus more to be announced), lucky participants get the opportunity to sit face-to-face with their favourite superstar artists for 5mins at a time, moving from table-to-table to ask all their burning music production questions.

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AmpMe app links your phones into an interconnected sound-system

18

Nov

Seb

Just what we need, more inferior sounding speaker options and kids playing music off their phones! AmpMe have just launched a new app that allows you to ‘merge’ phones into an inter-connected speaker system to remotely reach far-flung locations by pairing up yours and your friends’ phones so that your music playlist (currently only SoundCloud) can be synced up to play at the same time. It’s actually a great idea, and we’re looking forward to testing out the technology. They now just need to team up with Serato Pyro – the brand new mass-consumer app/iOS music player that beat-matches and mixes song playlists for you.

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Digital Radio: the box you can’t beat

18

Nov

Seb

Commercial Radio Australia working with audio specialist agency Eardrum has just launched its latest marketing campaign to spruik its DAB+ digital radio product and has enlisted Australian beat-boxer Tom Thum to illustrate the wide-ranging musical spectrum available on digital radio. Tom Thum (who has notoriously beat-boxed his way through the Terminator theme song and across TEDx Sydney stages) uses his vocal techniques to accurately replicate a variety of song styles and formats to showcase the diversity of genres available on digital radio. Amazing campaign idea and authentic use of talent!

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Change the world, with your music

17

Nov

Seb

There’s a social platform called Ehco that is revolutionising the way art and activism intertwine, simply by offering artists the opportunity to donate 50% of any profits generated through their network to a cause they believe in. Socially conscious musician Kenna is doing just this: he wants his music to make a positive social impact on the world with an innovative crowdfunding campaign positioning himself as the first “one-for-one artist”. For every dollar he makes off his album, he’ll give half to one of 23 charity organisations that his fans and partners choose. It’s a bold experiment, and one that may offer an entirely new way to re-inject a novel sense of value into music. Check out his campaign here.

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eBay’s ‘Shop A Song’

17

Nov

Seb

The e-commerce site has come up with a clever way to market its services and products by juxtaposing song lyrics with appropriate sale items in their new campaign. Matching the lyrics to popular songs alongside a range of items you can buy on the site, the ‘Shop A Song’ campaign uses a mix of classic material and contemporary hits (from Billy Joel, Vance Joy, Warren G, Ke$ha and Florida Georgia Line) to illustrate their lyrics with eBay purchase items. Let’s hope they banked up lots of music in their search for the right songs, as the possibilities are almost endless to extend this concept and work with more artists. They could even revive Weird Al Yankovic and his eBay parody song.

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How to: exploit vinyl as a passion point

17

Nov

Seb

If the recent resurgence in popularity of vinyl as a collectible  is anything to go by, it’s clear that even as digital streaming overshadows the conversation with key players wrestling for dominance (despite very few actually paying for on-demand subscription services), passionate music lovers are investing in the tangibility and validity of vinyl as a preferred audio medium. So where are the opportunities for brands looking to tap into this niche of devotion? The Vinyl Factory analysed this trend for a feature article published back in 2013 suggesting that vinyl has become a by-word for “real” experience and a nostalgic idealisation of the pre-digital world that marketers have latched on to. Sighting Becks, First Direct, BMW Mini, Durex, Ikea and Burton as some of the trailblazers to have tapped into the phenomenon, it’s an insightful read.

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