DownloadMusic.ie are releasing an album of the best of unsigned Irish, fifteen tracks from DM artists showcased on a USB album. Sales will count towards the official chart, a very exciting prospect for the everyone involved (personally, I’ll go lally over a USB album placing highly and implore you to abandon CDs altogether).
Read all about it over on the DownloadMusic.ie blog….As a regular user of the site I’m chuffed to be involved on the kind invitation of Johnny Beirne and look forward to hearing the shortlist soon. A panel will each select three top tracks from a group of fifty. I quite look forward to settling down in front of a player of fifty new Irish songs but know the choicin’ part’s gonna be hard!

Getting music from practice rooms to strangers’ iPods is a new band’s biggest challenge. Internet’s role in early marketing has the power to make or break: Nirvana might reincarnate in Letterkenny but if neo-Kurt can’t type, he’s fucked all over again. Music websites are springing up like daisies and the thriving appetite for new bands in Ireland certainly derives from web exposure of free downloads on profile pages. Despite a compact population, the market for music continues to expand beyond confines of traditional media of television, print and radio. The web is now musicians’ most important tool.
Downloadmusic.ie recognised bands’ desires to take serious steps in building on such foundations, smoothing a route towards releasing music, providing a friendly, accessible interface to bridge the gap between product and player. Once singles have done well a host of new directions open up for these street-level bands, giving them the power to push their music to a mainstream audience. Inclusion on this USB album is another small step towards that goal. Here’s to them!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under Albums, Blogs, News, Unsigned Bands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.