Lost My Dog ‘Connect’ is an opportunity for budding DJs, producers and anybody with an interest in the dance music industry to meet and learn from some the UK finest underground House artists, alongside LMD label bosses and record shop staff.

Lost My Dog has teamed up with legendary record store Swag Records, based in Croydon, London, who have been long-time supporters of the label and who introduced artists such as Nathan Coles, Harold Heath and Nick Dare to LMD.

On the afternoon of Saturday 7th November you can hear sets from Rhythm Plate, Giom, Pete Dafeet, Nick Dare and Terry Francis as well as get their advice on music software, hardware, production tips, DJing and learn how they got their first break.

Also in attendance will be Lost My Dog label bosses Najan Ward and Ian Straker who will be giving advice on how to approach labels, things to consider if you are interested in starting your own label and all aspects of the dance music industry. And of course the hugely experienced Swag Records team will be on hand to talk to and serve up the latest hot 12”s. If you’re looking to work in the dance music industry this is a rare and free event that should definitely not be missed.

Date: Saturday 7th November 2009, 12:00 – 18:00

Location: Swag Records, 42 Station Road, West Croydon, London, CR0 2RB

DJs / Producers:
Rhythm Plate / YSE (Lost My Dog, Winding Road)
Pete Dafeet (Lost My Dog)
Giom (Lost My Dog, Aroma, Blackcherry)
Nick Dare (Lost My Dog, Reform Recordings)
Terry Francis (Fabric, Wiggle)

LMD Label Bosses:
Ian Straker
Najan Ward
Pete Dafeet

plus
Liz, Paul and the Swag Records team.

I hope some of our UK Music Jobs members can check it out!

Lee Jarvis.

(Image via Lost My Dog Records)

LIVE GIG REVIEW

ARTIST – Florence + The Machine

VENUE –  Rough Trade, Brick Lane

Well by now pretty much every music fan in the country will have heard  about 22 year old London singer/songwriter Florence + The Machine.  Hyped to the max over a year ago (something our UK music press just love to do) she has been proclaimed and acclaimed without any real chart success even winning an absurd critics choice Brit Award with only one single.  None of her tracks released so far have seriously dented the top 20. Latest single Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) has been buoying around the top ten without finding its feet so is she simply Little Boots part deux?

No, thankfully not. Florence has most definitely some big musical chops.  Her performance at Glastonbury (while not as astonishing as some would have you believe) demonstrated her star presence and a bizarre but beguiling combination of Amazonian fierceness with little girl charm.  More importantly the music is very good indeed but not quite great.  Comparisons have been plentiful with Kate Bush but honestly I doubt there is a track on her debut album (very good also) that people will still be singing in 20 years.  This doesn’t mean that Flo has failed, far from it.  What she has done as stuck to her guns, created an image and sound that is distinctive and credible while getting on with winning over both press & public alike.

In many ways she reminds me of a female Patrick Wolf.  Both have a strong Celtic & bohemian vibe to their music.  He is far more anti-establishment perhaps indicative of how female singers flourish more under record label management than male in the industry.  What they both possess however is a sense of individuality and the ability to genuinely connect with their audience through sweeping, emotive, epic tunes.

Last nights performance at Rough Trade was a nice little showcase of a few of the lesser heard tracks from newly released debut album ‘Lungs’.  Amusingly Florence nipped out to use the toilet after her sound-check and passed us all in the queue.  No one really noticed it was her despite the trademark flaming red locks and black hot-pants and then she nearly tripped going into the bar next door.  As amusing as this might be she mentioned it as soon as she got on stage and it simply added to her charming persona.  She doesn’t take herself too seriously and when she smiles and giggles you can’t help but fall under her spell. Then she starts to sing.

There is no question that her style and voice is marmite but no one can fault her technically. Her vocal range and enchanting delivery of the story is the stuff of which powerhouses are made. The material focuses heavily on the emotional high’s & low’s of relationships and as Florence stated  ’this one is about those times were you just go completely crazy when you break-up with someone. Just me then? OK….’. You get the impression that these lyrics are absolutely her personal view and she’s hoping you’ll get it but if not enjoy it anyway.

‘Between Two Lungs’ was the 1st track and it kicked off things nicely  with her powerful voice ripping through the crowd.  Up next was the anemic White Stripes esq. anthem ‘Kiss With A Fist’ which isn’t about her own experience of domestic violence she cheerily informed us but rather about an aggressive, passionate couple she used to see around Camberwell.  Hard to tell whether she was telling the truth or simply teasing the press but regardless it got everyone singing and clapping along.  ’My Boy Build’s Coffins’ is a gothic fairytale both quirky and twisted with a bittersweet sting in its tail… ‘one of these day’s he’ll make one for you’. Great stuff.  You can imagine  her writing songs for a Tim Burton movie one day.

Hurricane Drunk and Drumming Song were good if not particularly memorable while the highlight the wonderful ‘Cosmic Love’ shows why she has all the potential for greatness.  With its Arcade Fire style drums and impressively assured vocals, this is perhaps the most challenging yet rewarding song on the album.  It lifts you to a point where your threatened with a massive chorus but instead it leaves you teetering on the edge without sacrificing any of the power or potency. Genuinely thrilling.

Dog Days Are Over and current single Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) were perfect choices to end the set with and she delivered both with ebullient energy and precision leaving the crowed wanting more.  True sign that a star has been born, coifed, media trained to the hilt and thrown out there for our consumption.  I think she’ll do just fine.

**** (4 out of 5)

Matt Williams

If you’re in a band, or a producer, there is always one important question – how am I going to get a record deal?

It used to be a simple formula but things have changed. The onus is now on the band to work it themselves – to come to the label with a finished product. In the past, a band would get signed on a demo and the record company would pay for the band to go into the studio. Not anymore – the music business landscape has evolved so quickly that the industry has struggled to keep up.

(But this is not just a music industry problem. Any industry who experienced such a dramatic shift in the way they do business in such a short period of time would be left playing catch up).

My name is David Silverman and I own one of the leading music PR companies in the UK, Outpost. This isn’t the time or place to go into how I actually came to work in PR, but lets just say it came from being an artist myself – being in a band, a producer, a DJ. I also own a record label and music publishing company, 3 Bar Fire.

I’ve been on the frontline of the industry for the last 10 years and I’ve seen the changes in the industry first hand. I want to share my 13 GOLDEN RULES to make it in the music biz if you’re an up and coming band (or established for that matter!), a manager, distributor, DJ, agent or anyone else that would be interested in knowing how to generate the kind of promotion you need to get noticed…

The number 1 rule. If you haven’t got a great product to sell, then people are unlikely to want to buy. I think the polite phrase is you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silver purse – or words to that effect. Go away and come back when you have some decent, new, relevant music to play – not a copy of someone else’s and not something that’s dated. Don’t trust what your friends/girlfriends/brother/mother/sister says. You need proper honest feedback.

Just set one up. How? – because I just set up a record label and its called ‘This is My Record Label’. It’s that simple. You get a website saying www.thisismyrecordlabel.com, you get a myspace with the same name. You set a release date and you get 200 promo CDs made up (you can do this yourself, just make sure they look good!). Then you start sending them out (see sections below).

Now instead of being unsigned, you are signed to ‘This Is My Record Label’ or whatever name you choose, and you’ve immediately lost the stigma of ‘unsigned’ which is loaded with negativity.

What tracks do you put on the promo CD? Release a single – one main track plus one other, 2 tracks in total. If you can get any remixes done then do so, no more than 2.

This needs to be 2 MONTHS away (see later for why). Say today is March 1^st, then set your release date for the first Monday in May (records are always released on a Monday, don’t ask why, that’s the way it is).

If you’ve got some music to play, then get some kind of show/live date lined up to play it. Tell people about the dates. Hell you can even sell some of your CD’s from your new record label there. Set the gig up as close to the release date of your single as possible.

If you’re in a band you need to look cool. You’re aspirational, you’re a product and consumers need to believe that what they’re buying into is some way going to rub off on them.

And this isn’t you against a graffiti strewn derelict house/disused railway line. If you can get some great, creative shots done then this is a big advantage – magazines and websites need their pages to look great. If you’ve got great shots…..then you’re doing their job for them.

Pick up the mags that are relevant to you and your music. Pick out the reviews editors, news editors and features editors. Send them the promo CD with a PRESS RELEASE (a one page description of the music with the date it will be released, short background on the track, the band/DJ and anything else that is interesting or newsworthy).

Now, this is the reason you have set your release date 2 MONTHS away – monthly magazines have a minimum 6-8 week leadtime. That is, they need to get your CD, listen to it, send to their reviewers, get the written review back, send to designers, add pictures, get mag signed off, get to printers, get to distributors, get in shops, BEFORE the record is out! That takes about 6-8 weeks. Hence if you send a release to a monthly mag with a release date only 4 weeks away, they probably won’t do it. For a weekly mag, you’re looking at about 4 weeks leadtime, for a daily publication around 3 weeks.

NB – Send CD’s to magazines, not MP3’s. Make sure full details and contacts are on there. Make it stand out from the crowd – make it look like they should listen to it.

You need to listen to the radio and pick out the shows that play your type of music. Then, you need to find out who PRODUCES that show, and send them the CD, not the DJ – the producers decide what gets played. Include your press release as described in point 7 above for press. Lead time here is 4-5 weeks before release date! So send this AFTER you have sent your copies to press.

Goes without saying these days – get your videos/filmed performances up on YouTube and keep your Myspace up to date. Make a ‘Fan’ page on Facebook. Twitter to your friends. Which web magazines do you need to hit? The ones that cover your genre so hit them with your promo CD from your label (with press release). They will take it seriously because it’s not a ‘demo’.

Sell your downloads on your website, Myspace – have a look into digital distribution (sometimes called digital aggregators) to get your music distributed to download stores all over the web.

Flyering. You’ve got to promote your gig and your releases – invest in some help from some friends. Pick gigs of similar artists and flyer outside after the gig. Put in shops and bars. If you don’t market yourselves and don’t have a marketing plan, then no one is going to know about you, simple as that.

Hit them up – not all the time so you annoy them, but maybe once a week or once a fortnight – make sure you have something interesting to say so people want to read it and not just delete it.

Take strategies from the business world and translate them into a musical context. You’re a product – you need to market yourself like the brands market their products. You may not have their budgets, but if you get into this way of thinking, you can find lots of cost effective ways to promote yourself.

What your trying to do is to get everything to happen at the same time. Radio, Press, Online, flyers, e-mails, gigs – you need to CO-ORDINATE your campaign – just as you would if you were running a business. You need everything running in snyc – create a diary, plan it out – and in this way, you will be able to build your profile, develop new and beneficial relationships and get the coverage you want.

Not famous yet? It takes time. You need to do this over a period of years – its rare people just become stars over night – it happens but is the exception rather than the rule. The ones that appear to have come from nowhere have actually been following the above rules for a long time…They’ve paid their dues, nothing comes easy.

David Silverman
www.outpostmedia.co.uk

Traditionally, most artists and bands would dream of getting a record contract. In the modern digital music world, this aim has diminished, as it is no longer a necessary part of a successful music career. The most important part of your music career today is the ability to build a following. If you think that’s not possible without a major label spending big bucks on your marketing campaign then think again, and think ‘online’.

The internet has brought together networks of people who are geographically spread far and wide, and with a good online promotion plan you can provide a place for them to socialise on the web and ultimately become loyal fans. Artists are managing to do this with success on many levels, in all genres. Scouting for Girls built their reputation on social networking sites (plus their performance at the UK Music Jobs launch party!), and once their fans and followers started to increase, so did media interest. Both of those can snowball in the right conditions, and that will help push ticket sales of shows and so on. Generating that much ‘noise’ online can draw you to the attention of record labels, as happened to Erin McCarley. The singer-songwriter rocketed from virtually unknown to her current level in little over a year, and this was “due in no small part to things like MySpace”. McCarley goes on to add, “That stuff kind of started before I even got with a label… And so people became aware through MySpace and then [television] music supervisors started contacting [me]”. So, even if you still want that elusive record contract, these are steps that you should be taking anyway.

Putting your music out there is the first step, but connecting with your fans will help entice them back to your site or page. People crave authenticity, and this will also encourage them to spread the word about your music for you. With the array of social networking sites available, you can post photos, blogs, interviews, offer free downloads, directly message your fans asking to upload videos, and so much more. What should you be concentrating on? All of it. Which site should you have a presence on? All of them. This is not a scatter-gun approach, rather that there are many places that music-loving people hang out online, depending on their a number of personal preferences. The choice is endless, unlike a small town that may only have one music magazine (therefore that is the one to advertise in), and your fans are everywhere, therefore so should you be. What you do with the following once you have it is up to you (go on tour? sell T-shirts? start a cult?), but to get there, you must build it yourself.

Be online, be genuine, be found.

Lee Jarvis.