See You at Unconvention!

Today we’re off to the Unconvention event in Salford.

Unconvention is a 3-day conference organised by Ruth Daniel of Fat Northerner Records for the indepdent music industry. There will be various panels, lots of networking, great music and lots of pies (apparently).

Really looking forward to meeting some movers and shakers from the grassroots of the industry, including Andrew Dubber of New Music Strategies, Nick Fitzsimmons of Penny Distribution and Johnny Beirne of TextATrack, amongst others.

You can find out more about Unconvention here, and if you’re going… see you there!

Preparing for Relaunch

As you may know, here at Musoswire we have been working on a new website for quite a while. Well, the great news is… it’s nearly here!

Unfortunately, we have needed to take the website down a couple of weeks in advance of the relaunch to prepare the servers, DNS and database stuff ready for the new site. We’re moving servers (Musoswire will finally be hosted on our own server), and that’s gonna require some major changes to the way things are organised. Read more »

See The First Twestival Well Drilled

Remember we told you about Twestival and its musical off-shoot, Twestival.fm? Did you upload any songs or donate directly? Well, we now have some more news.

charity:water are about to drill the first well paid for by Twestival donations, in Ethiopia. They’re heading out there next week, and are gonna be covering the whole thing with videos, Twitter, etc.

Visit charity-water.org/twestival for all the details!

Government to end New Deal for Musicians

The UK government yesterday announced plans to end it’s New Deal for Musicians scheme that has been so instrumental (pardon the pun!) in the careers of people like James Morrison and The Zutons.

Speaking to The Independent, Morrison explained how the New Deal enabled him to further his career… “Going on the scheme helped me out a lot, I had no money; I was signing on. I got that bit extra to help me through. I got a new guitar. Without the help from the New Deal, I would have struggled to do what I was doing.”

The scheme will end in October, to be replaced by the “Flexible New Deal”. The government has assured us that musicians will continue to receive help under the new scheme.

Introducing MusiCares

MusiCares

A friend of mine, Brenda Walker of RebelContent, recently introduced me to MusiCares - a very worthwhile charity which aims to help musicians in times of crisis. I want to share this with you, so here’s Brenda…

MusiCares provides emergency financial assistance, addiction recovery resources and much more for music people in crisis. Established in 1989 by The Recording Academy, MusiCares provides a safety net of critical assistance in times of need. MusiCares’ services and resources cover a wide range of financial, medical and personal emergencies, and each case is treated with integrity and confidentiality. MusiCares also focuses the resources and attention of the music industry on human service issues that directly impact the health and welfare of the music community.

You can learn more at www.musicares.com, or why not make a donation?

Last Chance to Upload your tracks to Twestival.fm

Today is the final day to get your music featured on Twestival.fm, the online music event supporting the Twestival project we mentioned previously.

If you haven’t done so already, we urge you to donate at least a couple of your tracks to this very worth cause. It’s simple to do, costs nothing (although it would be lovely if you could donate some money too) and your tracks will be available to download for FREE from the Twestival.fm website until the 19th.

Support the cause - upload your tracks now.

Janet Wood and Umdumo Wesizwe

A longstanding supporter and friend, Janet Wood, has recently completed a new collaborative project with Umdumo Wesizwe, a group of 10 young-men from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

We’re hoping the CD will be available soon, but in the meantime here’s Janet to tell you more about the project…

Umdumo Wesizwe sing a cappella songs and also dance. Their music is rooted in the imbube vocal music (also called iscathamiya) of southern Africa, traditionally sung by miners, but their version is infused with more diverse and modern styles (reggae, hiphop, kwaito, gospel etc.) and they call what they do gusheshe music. They sing in both English and Ndebele.

I met them in Sheffield during their first UK tour in October 2007, when we were involved in a choral performance called Poverty Requiem - I was one of the soloists and they had been drafted in to swell the choir. Enthused by their energy and the power of their music, I went along to one of their performances and shared some of my own songs with them. We kept in touch and when they returned to the UK for a further tour in 2008 we began exploring ways in which we might work together.

I worked initially with the leader of the group, Mqoqi Nkomo. We began by taking one of each other’s songs and adding something of our own to it - these are the first two tracks on the CD. We then introduced our ideas to the rest of the group and rehearsed together, which was very exciting. From then on we would each come up with the germ of an idea and then the other would work on it - we’d then put it together and then try it out on the group, many of whom would then add their own ideas.

In a couple of the songs I sing in Ndebele - I am now learning the language and really enjoying it. I’d like to get to the point where I can write a whole song in their language.

At the end of their 2008 stay we managed to record six songs at Wavelength Records in Doncaster and are producing a CD of the project called Together - Thina Sisonke.

I feel the project is unique and exciting in many ways. On the face of it we could not be more different - a white, middle-aged, British woman and ten young black Zimbabwean men. Add to that the difficult history of our two countries and you have an interesting mix! But we are united in our mutual respect, our passion for music and the power that comes from singing from the heart.

Visit Umdumo Wesizwe online at www.umdumowesizwe.com.

If you’d like to be notified when Together - Thina Sisonke becomes available, please email helpdesk@musoswire.com, and we’ll make sure you know almost as soon as we do!

How to be Conversationally Promotional

There was a fantastic post on the intrsctn blog on Saturday about how you can use Twitter to build your fan/band relationship, starting with just 3 “tweets” per day.

Given the hype around Twitter at the moment, and the apparent misunderstanding about how to tweet effectively, I thought I would share it with you.

So, before you start twittering random rubbish, read this!

Philanthropic Promotion with Twestival.fm

Twestival is a Twitter-based festival project aimed at raising awareness of (and raising funds for) charity:water.

On the 12 February 2009, 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and fundraising.

An off-shoot of Twestival is Twestival.fm - a separate project aimed at raising an extra $20,000 through the generosity of artists and their fans. Bands and musicians can submit tracks (and donate themselves), which are then made available to stream and download through Twestival.fm. Any tips given to the bands through the website go towards the Twestival fund.

How does this relate to my promotional activities?

Read more »

Musoswire.com is live again

We had some problems with the main Musoswire website over the Christmas period, as you may have noticed! Half of the site disappeared, and we couldn’t get hold of the hosting company to sort it out (damn holidays!).

But I’m pleased to say everything is now sorted, and you can now buy great music and sign-up as per normal.

Meanwhile, look out for great new music from Jaw Lawrence apeparing soon!

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