Highlights and News from Music Allies
Are you going to SXSW? If so, be sure to catch performances from Music Allies artists Matt Morris, Anuhea and Arizona!
Our full schedule can be found at: www.musicallies.com/sxsw09.
We’re kicking things off on Wednesday at 6pm with a party at the Yard Dog (directions) featuring performances by Matt Morris and Arizona. The event is FREE and we’re buying the beer.
Take a minute to RSVP here: www.musicallies.com/sxsw09/rsvp.html.
One of the ways we promote our clients is via our online marketing campaigns. Recently we’ve been working with Echo Mountain Records to increase the profile of some of their artists including Arizona and Tyler Ramsey. Here’s a peak at our online reporting system and the work we’ve done for them.
At the beginning of the year, I had the pleasure of being introduced to the music of Matt Morris in Austin TX . Matt was starting to work on an album with Charlie Sexton and a guy named Justin Timberlake. I was intrigued but skeptical. All my skepticism went away when Matt introduced himself, picked up a guitar and played me a song called Bloodline.
During the last 12 months I’ve become a huge Matt Morris fan. He writes songs about things that matter. He understands the challenges and struggles that we all face and he translates it to incredible songs. Matt is blessed with an incredible voice – he often draws comparisons to Freddy Mercury and Jeff Buckley.
Matt just finished up the ambitious album he was making (set to be released in 2009) but in the meantime, he released a 5 songs EP called Backstage at Bonnaroo and Other Acoustic Performances. The stripped down performances were recorded in the Music Allies backstage studio at the Bonnaroo Music Festival and feature Charlie Sexton on guitar.
The Music Allies team worked with Justin’s label Tennman Records to start introducing Matt’s music. As I reflect back on 2008, here’s some of the highlights
* Matt performed at this year’s Bonnaroo Music Festival.
* Anticipation and interest in Matt’s music is significant including recent coverage in AOL, Spin, Rolling Stone, Relix, and Paste.
* Matt completed a 28 city tour with Joan Osborne including a performance on the CBS Early Show performing a duet of Joan’s song “Cathedrals”
* His studio album The Un American will be released on Tennman Records (Justin Timberlake’s new label) in 2009.
MP3 Stream of “Don’t You Dare” from the upcoming album The Un American:
Matt Morris – \"Money\"
Check out this video from Spin Magazine online coverage.
http://spin.com/articles/backstage-bonnaroo-matt-morris
Matt performing for Paste Magazine
http://pastemagazine.com
Backstage at Bonnaroo and other Acoustic Performances, a five-song EP Stream
http://musicallies.com/mattmorris/bonnaroo/index.php
Check out Matt CBS Early Show performing with Joan Osborne [Nov 9 2009]
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4585971n
Here is the article from the Boulder Daily Camera.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/sep/18/stripped-down/
Did you catch Aimee Mann’s Christmas tour this year? I missed it (again!) but we heard it was hilarious. What a year, for Ms. Mann. Her single “Freeway” received more airplay then any other song in her solo career! Stations like KFOG San Francisco, KMTT Seattle KINK Portland, and WXRT Chicago played the song. At it’s peak, over two million people were hearing Freeway each week (for over a month). The song peaked at #18 on the R&R commercial AAA chart.
Aimee is a great case study in the importance of taking time to setup an album. We believe time is the great equalizer. Let’s face it, being patient is something that major labels just don’t do well. Our team started playing “Freeway” for radio programmers in November 2007 (six months before the album came out). We took our time and tried to make radio programmers fans of the song before they had to make a decision on whether or not they were going to play it. Our employees constantly travel and meet with press and radio stations. In today’s hectic world, 30 minutes of face-time to play music and share our perspective is crucial.
Look at the results. KFOG San Francisco played “Freeway” over 400 times and KBCO Denver started playing Aimee Mann after years of not playing her music.
Music Allies is proud to present The Bacon Brothers YouTube Dance Off Contest. Submit a video of yourself dancing to “Go My Way” and you may win a chance to dance live with The Bacon Brothers onstage and have a clip of your dance moves featured in a new version of the video.
Continue reading ‘Music Allies presents The Bacon Brothers YouTube Dance Off’
Sometimes, its hard for people to understand exactly what we do each day at Music Allies. Here is the answer: we create a strategic plan to market music and we execute that plan using our vast network of contacts in media and music. Our team is extremely selective on the music and events we promote – which has earned us respect throughout the music and media industries. As we move forward, we’ll continue to partner with online sites, newspapers, bloggers, radio and technology companies to help spread the word about our music. And, we’ll continue to find new ways to build a better music business.
We are optimistic about the future of the music! Stay tuned….
If you ask the Music Allies crew what are some of the accomplishments they are most proud of – you will almost always hear G Love’s name. Since our radio team partnered with Brushfire to promote G in 2006, we have helped get G Love’s music back on the radio and helped re-establish him as a big time live act (selling out Red Rocks baby!). In fact, G Love’s Lemonade album was his fast selling to date.
G Love’s new album Super Hero Brother is a strong follow-up! So, you can imagine how psyched we are that “Peace, Love and Happiness” is now the biggest G Love single of his career! The song charted in the Top 20 on the R&R chart. Kudos to Nick Attaway and Damon Grossman and hats off to G Love who works his ass off. The dude writes great songs, puts on great shows and gets up early and does everything we ask of him (G’s visited 125 radio station during the last 30 months).
Music Allies has built a new official Matt Morris website utilizing a front end CMS. To maintain aesthetic, all of Matt’s major social networking sites were redesigned to match the look and feel of the official site. The site carefully incorporates Flash elements, RSS feeds, Matt’s Twitter stream and is still coded to be properly optimized for index crawls. Take a look at the site by clicking HERE.
About Matt Morris:
Matt’s musical career began at age seven when he performed “Blue Suede Shoes” to an audience of 15,000, receiving a standing ovation. It’s been hard to get him off the stage ever since. He joined the new Mickey Mouse Club when he turned 11, and that’s where he met future collaborator and producer Justin Timberlake…. Continue reading ‘Matt Morris Web Design’
Music Allies 