Once Upon A Time...
There were 3 blokes who met online. They said, "Shall we set up a music community and see what happens?" The End.
Any questions? Haha, just kidding but that probably is the "TL;DR" version!
I was inspired to get this post written after some pretty cool conversations I've had on my Hive blog asking about it and felt like sharing the story of how the Electronic Music Alliance and Electronic Alliance Records label came to be!
Atom Collector Records
When I was losing faith in conventional methods of social media like Facebook, Twitter and seeing Soundcloud become a bot fest, I somehow stumbled across Atom Collector Records at the end of 2017. Coincidentally, this was also the same time I started dipping my toes in the exciting waters of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.
I vaguely remember seeing a post from a gentleman called Remo Fiore, known by the artist pseudonym, Quint S Ence, which mentioned a few music sites and communities that used this new cryptocurrency thing and it sparked a keen interest - one of those communities mentioned was Atom Collector Records.
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As I shared my music and listened to others, there were few more wandering souls who were looking for their niche and I received a message to join a closed group of about 8-10 producers which was the "electronic wing", if you like, of Atom Collector Records.
This is where I met DaveyHub and Bufinjer and we wanted to open the doors up to the wider world, focusing on getting reaching new listeners and fans rather than keeping it a closed group that was only focusing on getting crypto. Of course, there was a bit of friction as there were different view points, some said, "it will never work", which is a bad idea when you have 3 determined people with a goal, and this is when Electronic Music Alliance was born!
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Electronic Music Alliance
When we first opened the doors in Jan 2019, we invited producers who were active on social media, obviously produced electronic music but most importantly, were open minded and community driven. The core principles that we began with have remained the same to the present day though:
1 - Help bring together a global community of talented electronic music producers who are actively engaged on social media, spreading positive vibes in the music community and,
2 - Provide a platform for music producers to grow, not just in terms of reach and getting new fans but also in terms of production and pushing new boundaries with our respective genres.
Some stayed, some left in this opening round of invites and that was fine, we knew we were venturing in to the unknown here but ultimately knew that the right people would come along.
Join By Request
After a couple of rounds of invites around March 2019, I think we got to about 30 producers that stuck with us and we changed our modus operandi to joining the community by request through messaging our Twitter page, rather than us sending the invite out. Some legends said they were banging on the door waiting to be let in like this cat haha!
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Electronic Alliance Records - Label
And within 4 months, we had set up the EAR label as an additional service to the producers if they wanted to release or distribute their music through us. Seeing as us 3 founders had previously been with labels, we used that experience to make EAR really for the artists and not take a cut.
In other words, we are pure volunteers doing this for the love of it and we're pretty transparent about how we run things... it's basically run by the community now anyway with ideas that come in and we do what we can to help! Little did we know a year on that we'd have over 150 releases!
Screenshot from our Beatport Page
Cryptocurrency Views
There were a couple of sites we were on in the beginning. One was called Musicoin which never seemed to load/play music (bit of a fundamental flaw on a music streaming site!) and the other was called Choon, which eventually shut down last year after many struggles (some self-inflicted) .
We were supportive of these start ups, did what we could to help share music on them and spread the word but a culmination of these two events lead us to have a community wide poll as to whether we'd continue with using crypto sites and the majority voted not to.
I still have hope with Hive, where I'm also able to support the listeners/fans who leave a comment and listen to my music, but it's off my own profile, not with EMA's. Some are hopeful on another site called Emanate but the last 12 months since that poll, EMA has focused on the major sites like Spotify, Soundcloud and Youtube to share the playlists - follow us on the links below if you have a preference.
Regular Playlists & Newsletters
One thing we have kept consistent since we began has been our weekly playlists to share a variety of electronic music from chillout to drum & bass and the monthly newsletters to keep everyone inside and outside in the loop!
We use these newsletters to feature an artist and share all the highlights in case you missed them over on our blog page! In fact, I'll be focusing on putting the next one together over these coming days!
Our monthly newsletters summarise the month's activities - check March 2020's edition here
Rounding Up
Right, before this gets too long a post, I will round it up here. Hopefully you found this backstory interesting and to everyone who's supported us, especially the awesome EMAliens - thank you and stay awesome!
Until the next time, take it easy
Nicky
Thanks to @steempress for developing the WordPress plugin, which helps connect bloggers to the blockchain. If you'd like to add the plugin to your WordPress site, click here to get started.
Original article on my website: https://nickyhavey.co.uk/2020/04/how-why-we-set-up-the-electronic-music-alliance-electronic-alliance-records/