Industrial Strength: new signings and team-ups, September 25, 2013

Aussie expat Betty Who signs with RCA, Columbia

21-year old Aussie born New York based indie-pop singer songwriter Betty Who has signed with RCA Records in America and Columbia for Europe. She released a single Somebody Loves You and an EP The Movement on her website last year. Somebody Loves You became a viral smash this month after Spencer Stout uploaded a video of him proposing to his boyfriend, Dustin Reeser, in the middle of a Home Depot in Salt Lake City, with a flash mob dancing to the song. It’s received 9.1 million views. Born Jessica Newham in Sydney, Betty Who taught herself piano and guitar, and moved to the US in 2007. She attended Interlochen Center for the Arts and Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Warner Music sign Ylvis after The Fox viral hit

Warner Music coughed up “huge money” to sign Norwegian singing comedy team Ylvis to a worldwide deal after their viral hit The Fox hit 43 million YouTube views in its three weeks of release. Brothers Vegard and Bard Ylvisaaker made their US live debut at the iHeartRadio festival in Las Vegas on the weekend, booked just a day before, wearing the signature squirrel and fox costumes from their music video.

Woodford Folk, Mullum Music, team for Festival of Small Halls

Two festivals, Woodford Folk and Mullum Music, have teamed up to present the inaugural Festival of Small Halls. The idea is to take the best folk and contemporary acoustic artists (one local, one international) from each of the festivals and put them on a run through 18 small communities across Queensland. Each night will be hosted by local volunteers. (The halls themselves have wonderful stories – for example, the Boonarga Cactoblastic Hall, 10 miles East of Chinchilla, is a memorial hall built to honour the Cactoblastis moth, brought in to save Queensland farmlands from the Opuntia cacti). The first Festival of Small Halls, featuring Rose Cousins and Jordie Lane, kicks off on November 23 at Mullum Music and ends at Woodford Folk on December 28. Full dates at www.festivalofsmallhalls.com.

Women In Docs join Plus One

Globally renowned Queensland-based indie folk duo Women In Docs have joined Brisbane’s Plus One, and release their Carousel album in November. Chanel Lucas, who makes up the act with Roz Pappalardo, agrees their fierce DIY ethics has sold them 40,000 records. “We have often gone our own way with our music and releases. This has been very successful overall we decided we needed more help. As we become more experienced we are really starting to value the contribution that other people can make to the process.” Lucas and Pappalardo are on an album launch tour that kicked off at Big Sound and runs until November 23. Lucas says Carousel “still sounds like the album you would expect from Women In Docs. It is very indicative of our live sound, with a bit of studio polish and production. The big difference is in the songwriting –usually Roz and I bring songs separately to preproduction and then we workshop them into Women In Docs songs. This time we wrote some songs together to create a real Women In Docs sound. We are really happy with the songs and the results!”

Van Warped Australia adopts children foodbank

This summer’s Van Warped Australia has adopted the Feed Our Children Now! Charity, similar to its American parent. Festival go-ers who donate three cans of food or $5 – and can jump the queue to get into the venue. Drop-off booths will be situated outside the gates of the venue. You can’t miss them: there’ll be a huge ’Skip The Line’ banner. This year’s American tour raised almost 330 pounds of food.

The Love Junkies join New World Artists

As a result of a blistering showcase at Big Sound this month in Brisbane, WA grunge/punk trio The Love Junkies have joined Sydney’s New World Artists. The roster includes British India, Closure In Moscow and Grinspoon. NWA’s Owen Orford declares, “These guys have one of the most explosive live sets we’ve seen from a young band in a while. New World Artists are looking forward to continuing the next part of their journey with them.” Band manager Matt Johnson reckoned, “It’s been a huge year for The Love Junkies with the release of their first album and the single Baby Come Home getting a lot of love from triple j. The Love Junkies are an authentic and exciting live band, so the dedication of New World Artists to all things live music gives us the perfect platform to keep assaulting the ears of punters from.”

Future Classic gets Chrome Sparks

Future Classic’s latest international signing is New York’s Chrome Sparks of Marijuana fame. His Sparks EP (whose title track has had 700,000 plays on Soundcloud without an official release) now gets a global release and vinyl packaging.

Bluesfest, GrottoFest, get closer

Bluesfest Byron Bay and blues and roots GrottoFest forged an alliance of late. The winner of the Bluesfest busking competition gets to play both events.

GrottoFest is on Saturday November 2 at Marburg’s Jay-Lee Park. Organisers say the 2013 event was kicked up a notch when Dallas Frasca agreed to headline. Frasca recently did a six week European tour with Ben Harper, Patti Smith and Aerosmith, and played to 50,000 at Le Mans Festival in France.

Sydney Festival appoints Slingshot Media

Sydney Festival (January 5 to 27) decided on Slingshot Media to handle its media strategy and buy and produce creative materials. Derek Gilchrist, deputy head of marketing at Sydney Festival revealed they made their choice after watching how Slingshot worked on Disney’s Lion King.

Industry Insider strikes content deal with Base79

Ben Pitcher’s music-oriented outlet Industry Insider struck a content partnership with global online video distributors Base79, to increase global exposure of its industry-focused content. Set up in 2007, Base79 generates over 700 million views per month across 1400 YouTube channels and has offices in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, LA and Sydney. Pitcher set up Industry Insider in 2011.

Absolut brings ideas together for Blue Room events

In an Australia-only campaign, Absolut is through its Facebook page calling on consumers with “originality, creativity, imagination, inspiration” to come up with ideas which they will collaborate with artists from music, fashion, art and video. The resultant works will be highlighted at The Blue Room events in October where Absolut will launch a new limited edition vodka.