The recent addition of skillful linguist MC Souleye and San Francisco's livetronica three-piece, BLVD, has served up some new beats to fill out the group's ever-evolving musical palette. Their fourth release, Music for People, finally catalogs this union of sounds that many fans have been witnessing live over the last year-and-a-half. Feeling the groove, Souleye combines his conscious wordsmithing and fast-paced flows with the soundscapes painted by beats (Dylan McIntosh), thick, deep bass (Tripp Bains), heavily effected guitar canvases (Curtis Sloane), and intelligent programming. When combined, these elements produced a series of tracks where each can stand on its own legs.
Another exciting and recent addition to the FanMail family, Cartfly, is powering BLVD's online store. You may ask, "What is Cartfly?" Well, Cartfly is the newest way to sell your products online. No setup fees. No annual fees. No listing fees. This simple e-commerce tool allows anyone with a valid Paypal email address and a product to start selling! It's FREE. It's EASY. It's SIMPLE. Customize the look of your new store and start selling items across the web. Cartfly gives you the code to embed your store into your favorite social networks, blogs, personal web sites, etc. Check out BLVD's Cartfly store below:
Long time client Umphrey's McGee has started an extaordinary pre-order campaign for their upcoming release Mantis.http://www.umphreys.com/mantis/
"Herein lies the core of our pre order concept--we are going to add more and more bonus content as the pre-order gains steam. The more pre-orders that are placed, the more bonus content will be added. Each time a new bonus level is reached, we will unlock another bundle of content for everyone. Of course, these bonus tracks are free to all who pre-order. The load of bonus material will be made available for digital download the week of album release. But of course we wouldn't want to make our fans wait months for everything, so the first bonus level will be available for download in early December."
The Dandy Warhols' home studio in Portland, OR, The Odditorium, the setting of one of the coolest music projects in recent memory, Breathe Easy. Taking the ideas of collaboration, art, and advocacy to entirely new levels, our good friends, The Dandys, are creating something truly innovative and genre defying.
A musical conversation is what is being recorded, but that is not what is so new. The conversation is being held by different artists, at different times. One artist will go into the studio and lay down a track on a song or two, then later another artist will go in and add a track based on what they heard. This way the tracks grow organically and are not limited to any one artist's vision.
The folks involved are what make this project so ground-breaking. Artists from all walks of musical life are adding their influence. Saul Williams, The Raveonettes, Black Angels, The Bravery, and Spindrift, are just a few of the artists that have gotten on board so far.
The tracks they are creating will start being posted on Oct. 21, and all proceeds will go to the Three Rivers Land Conservancy, a group dedicated to protecting wild areas from errant urbanization and sprawl. The Dandys, Three Rivers, and FanMail all agree that living well and building strong communities requires protecting our natural greenspaces.
Check out their MySpace, download the tracks, and check out this video.
FanMail and long-time clients and friends, HeadCount, teamed up for a voter-registration drive at the beginning of October. With the deadline to register for the upcoming election as early as October 5 in some states, time was of the essence.
As we all know, democracy only works if we all exercise our right to vote. HeadCount approached us with the idea of allowing FanMail's clients to send a free mailer to their subscribers encouraging them to register and vote. This proved amazingly successful. Over the course of just a couple of days, FanMail and it's clients sent almost a half of a million registration reminders and successfully registered thousands of previously unregistered voters.
1230 Records, the record company of FanMail clients, Sound Tribe Sector 9, is proud to present the latest from renowned rap-artist, Count Bass D.
To get the word out, 1230 Records has released an e-card that allows recipients to preview the album, L7, and utilizes FanMail's powerful Forward-to-a-Friend (FTAF) utility. The results have been astounding, with on-line sales taking off and the Count quickly building a huge internet buzz that is matched in intensity only by his beats.
With such obvious and easy success, it has to make you wonder: Why isn't every act doing this?
Kudos to 1230 Records and Count Bass D for knowing what the fans want and not being afraid to give it to them.
Our newest client, RockSTAR Music Corp., has a very exciting artist coming out with a new album this month. Her self-titled release, Elise Estrada, goes on sale today. Check it out at her myspace page. She has been featured recently with the likes of 50 Cent, Janet Jackson & The Backstreet Boys. We are very pleased to be working with RockSTAR Music Corp. and wish Elise all the luck in the world on her new release.
The Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco is wrapping up and what a great event it has been. Great music and lots of fan interaction opportunities have made Outside Lands more complex in scope compared to traditional festivals. Check out Crowd Fire. The "greening" throughout the event has also impressed me. It shows an organization's ability to hold an event drawing many thousands and stay environmentally conscious at the same time.
