New Signings & Team-Ups June 7

ARCADE FIRE MOVE TO SONY

Arcade Fire’s fifth album Everything Now will be released in Australia through Sony Music Entertainment Australia on July 28. It’s through a two-album deal struck with Sony label Columbia in the US and UK.

The Canadian band was previously with Universal, and released the chart topping Reflektor in 2013. It went on to be nominated for a Grammy and the 2014 Polaris Music Prize.

The band just dropped its new single Everything Now. Its video had over 1.24 million YouTube views. They previewed the song at a secret show in Barcelona on June 1.

Everything Now was produced by Arcade Fire, Thomas Bangalter (one half of Daft Punk)and Steve Mackey, with co-production by Markus Dravs. It was recorded in New Orleans, Montreal and Paris.

In Australia, physical configurations of Everything Now will include CD, cassette, and heavyweight vinyl LP — which will feature 20 different artwork variants, each bearing the album title in one of 20 different languages.

There will also be a limited exclusive Night packaging of both CD and coloured vinyl LP formats.

BARNESY BOOK GETS AMAZON/ KINDLE RELEASE

Book publisher HarperCollins’ US team has negotiated Jimmy Barnes’ best seller Working Class Boy as one of Amazon/Kindle’s books of the month. It will be available through June at the reduced price to US$3.99.

It’s quite an achievement, as book circles tell us it is extremely rare for Amazon US to include an Australian title, particularly a memoir, as one of their monthly deals.

Working Class Boy, of course, was a huge success in this market. It spent seven weeks at #1 on the national Bookscan charts and was the No. 1 adult title in 2016.

The sequel, Working Class Man, is set for a late October release.

MUSHROOM, UNIFIED, EXTEND GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP

Mushroom Music Publishing and UNIFIED Music Publishing have extended their global partnership. UNIFIED will continue to provide A&R services and Mushroom Music will provide the full suite of publishing services, including synchronisation pitching/licensing, creative services, administration and collection.

The deal was first struck in 2011 when UNIFIED came into being. The joint association led to deals for Vance Joy, hip-hop producer Illy, as well as heavy music bands including Northlane, In Hearts Wake and House vs. Hurricane.

It’s also landed five APRA awards, including Song of the Year in 2014 and most played work overseas in 2017 for Joy’s Riptide.

“Mushroom Music and Unified are a great fit,” said Mushroom’s Head of A&R, Linda Bosidis.“Together we have shaped a solid and creative publishing partnership, with a like-minded attitude towards developing a strong variety of songwriters.”

UNIFIED’s General Manager, Matthew Rogers, said: “Working with great people at Mushroom Music and their international network of independent publishers during the last six years has been extremely productive as they have helped us build a diverse and strong catalogue of writers.”

WARNER ENTERS JV WITH SH-K BOOM

Warner Music Group has entered a joint venture with New York-based Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records. It specialises in the cast recordings for music theatres as The Book of Mormon, Warpaint and A Bronx Tale.

Most of these recording have been sold on CD and download formats but its fans are now discovering streaming.

UNDER 18 EVENT FOR SYDNEY

The Oxford Art Factory, MusicNSW and the City of Sydney have joined forces to bring back the under-18 event XraySpeX on Sunday July 9.

Students and young people work together with music industry professionals to create a series of events showcasing Australian music to an underage audience.

The nine acts performing ate headlined by Bec Sandridge and The Vanns.

Originally launched in 2008, XraySpeX saw the likes the Tame Impala, The Presets, Art vs. Science, The Jezabels and Cut Off Your Hands play their first shows at the Oxford Art Factory.

OPTUS WORKS WITH IHEARTRADIO

iHeartRadio Australia partners with Optus for the next of its 2017 iHeartRadio Live series. Oscar and Grammy Award-winning singer Jennifer Hudson plays an intimate club show in Sydney on Monday June 19.

ISLAND SIGNS LAKYN

Island Records Australia has signed Melbourne based singer songwriter Lakyn. His debut single is View Looks So Good. He explains it’s about reaching your destination and realising why there were so many challenges on the way.

CAROLINE AUSTRALIA BEYOND THE PALE

Caroline Australia’s latest addition is hot new UK band The Pale White. Their new guitar-sharded single Reaction has seen the Newcastle-based duo hailed as “shaping up to be the next Royal Blood.”

The link up is through Ignition Records, the home of Noel Gallagher, Darlia and Primal Scream.

Made up of Adam Hope on vocals/guitar, brother Jack on drums and Tom Booth on bass, they say, “Being from somewhere like this [the Northeast] is more important than being a small fish in a big pond. We’ve got the potential to break out of the city where no one’s done anything for a while.”

PLAYERTEK SPONSORING RECLINK CUP

Sponsoring the upcoming Reclink Community Cup is Playertek by Catapult Sport.

It is a GPS and sports analyst-tracking device that will be worn by 10 players from each team on game day, which will deliver stats post game to add a fun layer of authenticity to the charity Aussie Rules game.

Catapult CEO Joe Powell said, “Our Catapult athlete monitoring devices are used by all AFL players and coaches to both enhance performance and mitigate injury risk. We can track how high a player jumps, how far or fast they run and collect more than 940 pieces of data per second.”

APPLE MUSIC CELEBRATES NEW NZ MUSIC

As part of last month’s New Zealand Music Month to celebrate all things Kiwi, Apple Music got Neil Finn to collaborate with four new acts to write and produce a song each. All four tracks are now released.

The four acts are Nelson singer songwriter NÏKA, Auckland hip hop performer and producer Bobandii, tropical electronic producer Baynk, and Zimbabwe-born, Wellington-raised artist TAPZ (formerly Young Tapz) who first emerged on Hermitutde’s platinum The Buzz.

Check out Apple Music to hear the tracks.

BRISBANE’S ZOO OFFERS ACTS VR EXPERIENCE

Through a tie-up with local start-up GiG VR, Brisbane live music venue The Zoo offers acts the chance to film their sets in 360VR.

It’s a way for fans to relive their fave gigs in a totally different way and create content for the rapidly expanding VR sector, says Phil Sheen who co-founded GiG VR with Chris Brady.

The footage they’ve shot at the Zoo can be experienced on socials at @gigvr.tv and at www.gigvr.tv.