omertarecords0224-blog

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Moving Forward With Omertà

To progress the label forwards many plans are in the making. Firstly, after the success of the launch event, talks are in progress with the venue to get a monthly weekday event. The consistency will hopefully help establish the label more within Bristol. other event talks look at collaborating with other promoters and labels. there have been talks with Sudo Sound, Bass Militia, Mangoes & Melons and Southside Breaks. 

Also in exploration are more unique events. This entails using outside of the box venues and promotion methods to provide customers with a more unique experience to the standard club night. To do this research in licences and council approval is underway. 

On top of events, music releases are the other mainstay of the label. Without the music there would be no label, so progressing this department is the main focus. Another main focus of this is networking the music to the correct influencers, much in the same way as the DPM repost. Using these platforms will only help with reach for music. 

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Second Event Room 2 Takeover

04/05/19 - Last night was Omertà’s second outing. The night as a whole was generally successful if not completely busy. Doing a room 2 takeover was somewhat a risk in the beginning as not being in 100% control means you cannot judge how successful the vent will be or if it has been promoted correctly. In this case I made a slight loss, but at the same time, gained new fans. Sometimes the benefits outweigh the cost. 

Aside from the money side of the event other aspects went smoothly. A van was needed to collect the sound system and take it back. This was done at 5 am after the night, so to make sure I was ok to drive I had to leave the night early to get some rest. There were a few DJs who dropped out on me, however, I was lucky to have sorted backups in case of this situation. 

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Overview of Progress

01/05/19 - To gauge the success of the label two areas will be judged, social success and financial success. 

Firstly, the Facebook page achieved 262 ‘likes’. Alongside this high levels of natural reach were obtained through intelligent promotion strategies (defined prior). 

The Souncloud page achieved 67 followers, not a huge amount, but a start. The EP release itself achieved 1600 plays from the platform. 

Sales figures for the release can be seen from the Bandcamp page. The distributor pays out quarterly from their platform sales (iTunes, Amazon ect), however, as no promotion was done towards these platforms it will be surprise if they take any money. 

The repost from DPM gained good traction, this goes to show how effective contacting repost pages can be in promoting a release. The video fo the track ‘Warm Rinse’ acheived almost as many plays as the whole EP on Soundcloud. 

Finally, the success of the merchandise, launch event and sales can be seen in the income/outgoing sheet. It shows that a total profit of £33 was made, this is a surprise as originally losses were expected when setting up. The result of a positive income is a good sign that the label will be successful. 

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Preparations for Next Releases

26/04/19 - With the label established, it is now time to look forward to the next releases. Having a back log of content is an aim of the label. This will help avoid stagnation and keep interest generated. 

The first batch of additional content is a remix EP for the ‘Back In Time’ release. Getting remixes done requires conversing with producers to see who is available and keen. One down side is that producers will say they are keen but then not get around to making anything, to combat this, large numbers of producers are contacted, as well as more reliable producers. Due to the large amount contacted it is essential to carry out proper quality control on any finished projects, offering guidance to producers to help steer work in the right direction. 

Next up we have the resident Shylock (Nathaniel) on a 3 track EP release. The tracks have been mostly finished and now need to be sent off for mastering (which has already been paid for). The next step with this release is to get some solid artwork and branding designed up ready for promo and release. 

Finally there are releases being made by both GY96 and Slim Sinna. GY96 has sent 9 tracks to the label, this is enough for 2 releases, so care is to be taken choosing which tracks to move forward with in the first release. Many notes have been taken regarding the tracks and how to move them forward. Slim Sinna on the other hand has made 2 tracks for the label but is very busy with prior musical ventures. It is worth waiting for Slim Sinna as his productions are of very good quality and he has established a name for himself in Bristol which will help with marketing. 

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Launch Night

18/04/19 - On the day of the event a major issue occurred, this was Facebook  deleting the event page the previous night. All contact links to get in touch with Facebook had led to nothing being sorted out. To overcome this a new event page was set up and a Facebook post put out informing people that the event is still on.   

Before the event I made sure the promo team was well informed and equipped  to do street promo. As the venue had all the equipment all I needed to arrange was how to get the animation projected onto the screen. The animations were made in collaboration with BTV Animation. Other preparations involved liaising with artists and working out riders. 

on arrival at the venue I made sure to introduce myself to the manager, staff and doormen/women. Venue set up involved creating an area to take money and sell merchandise as well as checking the sound and visuals were up to standard before public entry. 

The night was an overall success, taking in double the cost of running. I think one of the main factors of this success was the location of the venue combined with the use of a street promotion team, both before the event and whilst on. The Stokes Croft location offers a high amount of foot traffic past the venue. 

Edit - 19/04 - The original Facebook event has now been reinstated but no reasoning was given for its take-down. 

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Reception of Release and Preparations for Launch Event

10/04/19 - The reception of the release has been mainly positive. Though it has only been 6 days there have been positive reactions from some more established artists as well as general consumers. It is hard to judge if the release is a success after such a short period. More time is needed to gauge success. 

Contact has been made with YouTube repost channel Definite Party Material. This channel has around 29k subscribers, so acts as a decent platform to attain more reach. DPM will repost the track in the coming days. Other post-release promotion efforts lie in posting the content to different, but specialized, Facebook groups. 

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Release Day

04/04/19 - The day of the release relied heavily on seamless uploads and consistency across all platforms. This is what take a release to a professional level. Along with this a strong social media post is needed to attain the reach to make it successful. 

Firstly music was uploaded to sites Bandcamp and Soundcloud. This went as expected and was easy to do as it had been done many times before. Issues arose when uploading to the distribution site. The distribution company would not accept the release as it had ‘references to physical media’, in this case, the words ‘Side 1′ in the album artwork. To overcome this some basic editing was done to the image to remove the physical media reference. 

Once everything was sorted it was time to create a promo post linking to all the external platforms available to consume and download the music from. 

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The Production of Music [Part 4]

The final track, titled ‘Rough Barry’ is a steppy garage tune with a heavy jungle inspired wobble bass. The main inspiration for this track was the 1999 song titled ‘When I Was A Youth’ by Smokin’ Cheeba  (Burton, 1999). 

The wobble basses’ simplicity means that surrounding elements of the track must be prominent and interesting. Creation of the wobble bass uses to sine oscillators, de-tuned slight apart from each other. The result is phase cancellation that creates the wobble movement. The wobble bass was processed with various saturation and compression emulation plugins. Emulations were used to try and get an authentic analogue sound. 

References

Burton, R. (1999). Smokin' Cheeba ‎– When I Was A Youth. [Vinyl] Not On Label. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPPzD6YFDJ4 [Accessed 9 May 2019].

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Masters, Release Build Up and Planning

01/04/19 - Today the masters have come back from the engineer. The quality is really good and after some A-B testing are found to stand up to current production standards. There were a few revisions that needed to be made. Firstly the pad in Bad Boy Sound had been slightly lost, secondly the break in Warm Rinse had become slightly abrasive on the ears. Discussions with the mastering engineer led to him working out the issues and delivering the product straight back ready for upload. 

Now the main focus is put into generating hype for the release of the tracks. This is done by making social media posts using the photographic content from before. Other promotional content includes a video which features music from the release. Getting all of this promotional content liked and shared quickly after release helps boost the reach of said posts. This is where the promotion team, mentioned prior, come in handy. 

Also this week a deal was worked out with the Bass Militia team, where I produce art work for their next event and in return they print flyers with my event on one side and theirs on the other, working as cross promotion. This was very helpful to me as I could not afford to buy the flyers myself. 

Another development was the arrangement of a second night where Omertà hose the second, smaller room of a venue. This was a collaboration with Southside Breaks, the owner of which, has worked with myself prior to Omertà. 

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The Production of Music [Part 3]

Track 3 - Warm Rinse

The third track on the EP is a bass driven, pumping infusion of jungle, speed garage and techno at 136 bpm called ‘Warm Rinse’. The track features wide pads and breaks, reminiscent of 90s jungle, but tied together in a techno inspired speed garage bass and beat. The bass itself is heavily side chained to the kick to provide the techno style ‘pumping’ bass. The production for this track was more loose in terms of inspiration, the result was mostly making what felt good at the time. 

Vocals from the track were sourced from a Soundcloud channel that uploads recordings of old school sound system clashes or sound clashes. Vocals from the clashes have been sampled in all of the aforementioned genres, so the use of this 90s sampling technique gives a nice 90s vibe. 

Another element of the track is a looped vocal sample. The inspiration for this looping technique was derived from another 90s garage classic by 4 Deep Connextion called ‘Twisted Future’  (Norman and Shayler, 1997), and originally sampled by Kelly G in a remix of a track by Tina Moore called ‘Never Let You Go’  (Griffin and Moore, 1997). The technique loops the sample playing front to back to give a constant modulating sound. 

References

Griffin, K. and Moore, T. (1997). Tina Moore - Never Gonna Let You Go (Kelly G Bump-N-Go Vocal Mix). [Vinyl] RCA. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnFCvd7ocTM [Accessed 10 May 2019].

Norman, D. and Shayler, B. (1997). 4 Deep Connextion - Twisted Future. [Vinyl] London: DFL. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMGkRsXyR0I [Accessed 10 May 2019].

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Mix Downs, Promotion and Sales

25/03/19 - Time was designated to get all tracks mixed down properly ready for mastering. This involved checking the levels for enough headroom and situation everything within its environment. Testing also involved a lot of listing on different sound systems, headphones, cars, to get an idea on how it will sound on various sound sources. The mastering itself will be done by established producer Deadbeat UK. The engineer offers decent masters at a reasonable price and has a wide portfolio to back up his work. 

This week also saw the arrival of promotional materials. This included A3 posters and small rectangular stickers with the brand logo. The posters and stickers were then distributed to the promotion for team. The use of a team helps spread reach and works effectively when financial incentives are offered. In this case I gave each member an Omertà t-shirt and £10 cash. Prior experience has found this to be more effective than using online paid promotion as a paid team will also help actively on social media, negating the need for online payments and keeping more money localized within the Bristol music scene. 

Aside from the t-shirts given out for free, over half have now sold and it looks like the next half are set to sell quickly. 

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The Production of Music [Part 2]

The second track produced, was a speed garage inspired ‘warper’, so called for the quintessential warp synth sound (also known as ‘Dred Bass’) found within countless jungle and speed garage records. 

The song, titled ‘Bad Boy Sound’ takes heavy inspiration from the 1997 song, ‘Its the Way’ by Sub Kutz (Blake, 1997) . The structure of the song, with a sub-drop section before the main body of the music, is something used in many old speed garage records. This is then followed on by the ‘warp’ drop section. This sound can be found in 90s tunes from speed garage classics to jungle classics. 

Attempts at recreating the warp sound led to a similar result, however it lacked authenticity. With the authentic sound being a main focus of the project, research was undertaken to find out how the sound was originally made (much like in the first track). It was tracked down (Palmer, 2018) to being the reverse of a sample from a popular sample pack in the 90s called ‘Future Music CD Vol 1′. many of the other samples come from the same CD, forming the building blocks of the whole song. 

In alternate news the event page for the launch night had been set up and people invited. 

References

Blake, S. (1997). Sub Kutz ‎– Vol 2 - It's The Way. [Vinyl] Not On Label. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU2VkBP7k7I [Accessed 10 May 2019].

Palmer, O. (2018). CLONED: Dred Bass by Dead Dred. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aYeJ-S_OkQ [Accessed 10 May 2019].

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Launch of Social Media Platforms, Distribution and Promotion

17/03/19 - Today all of the web-based pages have been successfully set up. This involved creating multiple social media platforms and updating the visual and text elements of each page. This included, Facebook page + Event page, Instagram page, Youtube channel, Soundcloud channel as well as my new artist pages. The event page was only set up as a draft as the online promotion is to be staggered as to not over saturate the relevant pages too quickly (ref). 

As well as social platforms it is needed to set up consumption platforms. The platforms that have been chosen are Bandcamp and Spotify. Bandcamp has been chosen because of its ability for consumers to donate what they like towards a free download. This will hopefully increase profit but still have a large amount of downloads for the first release, getting the name out there. Secondly, Spotify was chosen as it is the biggest streaming service(ref). To get music onto Spotify you need to use a distribution service. Many of these distro services charge per track for uploads, however one was found that only requires a one off fee every year. This service will get the music onto platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Music and others. 

Aside from online activities more hands on action was taking in the formation  of a promotion team. The promo team are to help with postering and flyering as well as online promotion and word of mouth. We also went out for a photoshoot to take pictures of the new merchandise for online marketing. 

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Launch Day, Promo Merch and Remixes

12/03/19 - With the launch of the label in a few days, much preparation has taken place to ensure everything is smooth and professional looking from the start. This involved organizing the artwork into a folder, preparing posts and event information as well as setting up less public pages on sites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud. 

The t-shirt order has arrived and the product is of good quality. The plan is to sell the t-shirts on Bandcamp as well as more informally via direct messaging and at events. As well as the t-shirts both stickers and posters have been ordered as promotional material. The posters being for the launch event. 

Another development has been the production of remixes from artists contacted on social media. The production of these remixes gives an opportunity for extra content in between main release dates. Posting consistently will maintain interest in the label. So far a remix has been part made by 2 producers with others saying they will have a go. These must be perused to increase the chance of them being made, a deadline will be set to achieve this. 

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The Production of Music [Part 1]

05/03/19 - Track 1 - Back In Time

‘Back In Time’ is the title track of the first EP release. To make the music fitting to the labels theme and in-line with the manifesto, research was undertaken to understand the origins of the UK underground sound. 

Firstly I looked at tracks from the time that have a similar vibe to the vision. These were then used as inspiration. Notable tracks include 187 Lockdown’s anthem - ‘Gunman’ (Harrison and Jonah, 1997) and Groove Chronicles - ‘Stone Cold’ (Jude, 1997) . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwYGKIeeu6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVycT8k0tjM

These tracks, though contrasting in emotional content, represent the deep UK reese bass style I want to employ on the title track.

Further research into this sound led me to a video made by producer Owen Palmer. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8whhdvA0hV4 

In his video ‘Original Reese Bass Tutorial’(Palmer, 2018) Owen goes over recreating the original reese bass sound, but he also goes onto discuss the first track it was sued in and other notable tracks that have sampled from this original. As I am looking foremast for authenticity within the productions for Omertà Records, I decided to sample the original sound myself instead of recreate with synths.  

Reese Sample  (Kapp et al., 1991) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZn2N8_mUI

With heavy after FX processing, notably EQ, saturation/distortion, filtering and multi-band compression, this sound became the main synth for the title track of the EP. Other notable samples used in the track will be discussed in part 2 of the production series. 

References

Harrison, D. and Jonah, J. (1997). 187 Lockdown - Gunman. [Vinyl] New York: Kinetic Records. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwYGKIeeu6g [Accessed 10 May 2019].

Jude, S. (1997). Groove Chronicles ‎– Stone Cold. [Vinyl] London: Groove Chronicles. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVycT8k0tjM [Accessed 9 May 2019].

Kapp, R., Nanton, M., Saunderson, A. and Saunderson, K. (1991). Reese Project ‎– Just Another Chance (David Morales Mix). [Vinyl] Birmingham: Network Records. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZn2N8_mUI [Accessed 10 May 2019].

Palmer, O. (2018). Original Reese Bass Tutorial. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8whhdvA0hV4&t=12s [Accessed 10 May 2019].

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Build Up To Launch, Artwork and Platforms

24/02/19 - Build up the the public reveal of the label requires some promotional content. Facebook uses an algorithm that promotes video content over image, links and text based posts (Bucher, 2016) . In addition Instagram only hosts image and video content. So production of quality stimulating content is beneficial to marketing the label. To do this contact has been made with an animator to produce a promo video. 

The main artist Andrew has finished all artwork for the platforms and first release. He has also been paid as stated and invoices of work done as well as contractual rights to image use has been finalized. The artwork will be used on the platforms where the music is marketed. These platforms are yet to be set up, but will be complete nearer to the launch date as to remain a secret until everything is finalized.

The discussion of platforms also includes selling and streaming of music. The main options include Spotify, Apple Music and other big streaming sites; Youtube, Soundcloud and other media hosting sites; Bandcamp, Juno, iTunes, Beatport and other sales platforms. All of these are to be researched and case studied to see which best suit the running of Omertà Records. 

References

Bucher, T. (2016). The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), pp.30-44.

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Timeline, Planning and Progression

13/02/19 - As the project moves along communication is becoming a key aspect of its success. Since the last post changes include the venue being booked (Wednesday 17th April) and the T-Shirt artwork has been sent off to the printers. Communicating with professional businesses takes a look at ones language and approach. Care is taken to get to the point but not seem pressing as to build a strong relationship with the contacts (Jones and Alexander, 2005).

The T-Shirt printing has been chosen to work on a limited run (25). This is for two reasons, the first being that financial constraints prevent from getting more. Secondly limited runs offer an air of exclusivity to a product which in turn may contribute to its success (Lynn, 1991).

Other collaborative communications have been back and forth with the artist Andrew discussing, designs, colours, art info, deadlines and so on. Being transparent with Andrew is pivotal to art being finished and of high quality within the time constraints. Andrew has also given a logo design to be printed on stickers for promotional purposes.

Finally progress has been made regards to label artists and music contributions. Nathaniel has almost finished his EP to be ready for mastering. The self made EP is almost ready for mastering and will be sued as the first release. Artists GY96 has been approached and is up for making an EP and playing at the event. GY96’s music is of really high quality and very relative to the project, he does not have very many followers as of yet but has massive potential to create great music which Omertà will push.

With the launch event being further away than originally planned (due to busy schedule) the whole timeline of the projected has been shifted to accommodate. The new plan is to work around the event date and plan everything else from this. The event is 17th April, this means:

Launch social media platforms March 17th, promote release for hype

Release first EP April 1st

Build up hype towards event (April 17th)

Release second EP May 1st

These dates are still subject to change but work as guidelines. Once the social media platforms are public the whole plan moves into action working in stages of 2 weeks.

References

Jones, L. and Alexander, R. (2005). New International Business English. 5th ed. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge University Press [u.a.].

Lynn, M. (1991). Scarcity effects on value: A quantitative review of the commodity theory literature. Psychology and Marketing, 8(1), pp.43-57.