✨ IC Community Weekly #49: Bandcamp Friday Edition
ft. a Bandcamp job opening and our BC Friday picks, new albums from STRFKR and Gulfer, Bnny and ZORA singles, a Xiu Xiu reissue, a Backwoods Studioz popup, IC product updates, and more!
Hey and welcome to the latest edition of the IC Community Weekly!
In a week where Spotify said indie music generated half of its $9b worth of 2023 royalty payouts (which Hunter had some issues with), the IC community released an abundance of great music and announced the usual signings, tours, and more.
Keep scrolling for that, but first, the news from IC HQ…
Elene, IC’s amazing Services Lead, will be at the A2IM mixer event they’re hosting with Monstercat in LA next Tuesday - reply to this email if you will be too and want to meet up!
🆕 This Week in IC! The ability to bulk import Mechanicals, PPD, and Reserves rates; a new doc explaining how sales tax, shipping, or fulfillment fees are typically handled in royalty accounting; and a new importer for Merlin’s Spotify Discovery Marketing report.
It’s March, the final month of the Q1 Special! Sign up before the end of the month to get 30% off your first three bills.
Speaking of March, there are new dates for this month’s IC Live Classes! Sign up for one to get a walkthrough of the IC Software and/or get a look at Onboarding in action.
…and the community:
A2IM Indie Week tickets went on sale yesterday for this year’s event, taking place June 10-13 at the InterContinental Times Square, NYC. We’ll be there once again, crushing bagels, coffee, and the finest street vendor offerings.
AIM announced an exclusive discount on tickets to The Great Escape for their members.
Music Ally released an in-depth guide to Bandcamp, featuring case studies and practical advice from insiders and real-world experts including Rebecca Sicile-Kira from Sub Pop, Dan Cohen from Nonesuch Records and Aly Gillani from Bandcamp to help labels use Bandcamp to its maximum potential.
👋 If you’re an IC catalog and you’ve got news, releases, or other fun stuff you want us to include, just reply and let us know - this goes out to 2500+ inboxes every week!
BANDCAMP FRIDAY
Bandcamp waives their 15-20% fee today and have announced that Bandcamp Fridays will continue this year in April, May, September, October and December and they’ll be be doing “some fun stuff around the 40th BC Friday in May”.
Special releases, events and offers from the community today include:
✨ Sahel Sounds have set their whole digital catalog to ‘Name Your Price’ for today only - check them out here.
✨ Merge have several of their releases as pay-what-you-want today including the entire Merge catalogs from Waxahatchee and William Tyler, as well as the Destroyer record Your Blues.
✨ Captured Tracks have put together some recommendations from their store.
And here’s what we’ve got our eye on here at IC:
💿 Adam has his on Still (4AD), the new record by Portugal-born Danish singer, songwriter, and record producer Erika de Casier.
💿 Ari is looking to get Tollard by Bristol producer memotone, his debut on The Trilogy Tapes label, following records for Sähkö and his own MEMORECS imprint.
💿 Austin has Rosal by Fiesta En El Vacío in his sights, which is on Parisian label Teenage Menopause Records
JOBS IN THE COMMUNITY
🧑💻 Bandcamp is looking for an Artist and Label Representative to join their team, working out of its Berlin office. You'll spend most of your time reaching out to artists, labels, managers, and distributors about how best they can use Bandcamp to connect with their music-loving community & further drive revenues.
For more info contact aly@bandcamp.com
NEW IC CATALOGS
A very warm 🤝 to…
Echoette, an independent New York based music publisher & sync agency that specializes in artist focused services, licensing and clearance for all types of moving image media.
Hill City Recording, a label founded by Jesse Phillips in 2020 that helps Christian artists and songwriters get their songs recorded and distributed.
NEW RELEASES
ALBUMS
🎧 Polyvinyl released the latest record from the prolific and constantly evolving, Portland, OR band STRFKR, a band who’ve now been streamed over a billion times globally. It’s called Parallel Realms and is, according to Spill Magazine, “their clearest, most organized, and most exciting work yet”, a record that “carries a triumphant sense of renewal” and “courses with positivity even in its heaviest moments”. It’s available now, with some Polyvinyl exclusive variants available in their store.
🎧 Tophself released Third Wind this week, the fourth record by Montreal-based Gulfer, a band that “thrives at the intersection of emo, pop-punk, indie rock, and power-pop” (Stereogum).
SINGLES
🎧 Father/Daughter released a new single by Christchurch, NZ artist Pickle Darling (aka Lukas Mayo), an uplifting cover of the Billy Bragg classic, The Milkman of Human Kindness.
🎧 Get Better released hush, the new single by Minneapolis-based artist ZORA, which she calls “a toxic love story about a guy who didn’t want to be seen with me in public.”
🎧 Royal Mountain shared Carefree the latest single by Nêhiyaw singer-songwriter Wyatt C. Louis, “a track about finding those little pockets of clarity”.
🎧 Fire Talk put out the new single by Chicago quartet Bnny. The track, Crazy, Baby, is another taste of the forthcoming album One Million Love Songs (out April 5th), and is a “…tongue in cheek slightly self deprecating ode to recognizing patterns in your romantic history & yourself.”
🎧 Suicide Squeeze released the new Chastity Belt track Chemtrails, a song about “… not being able to let go of things and retracing memories in your head.” Their new album Live Laugh Love comes out March 29th.
🎧 Merge shared Bite Down from North Carolina–based songwriter Rosali, the title track from her Merge debut record, which coms out March 22nd. Check out the music video for it here.
🎧 Merge also released the new M(H)AOL track Pursuit, their first single as a 4-piece and first time up as the band’s lead vocalist for drummer Constance Keane. Watch the Zoë Greenway–directed visualizer for it here.
🎧 Houndstooth released the new Throwing Snow track Hear The Tongue Fork, a song about “duplicity… saying one thing and doing the other. Giving with one hand while stealing with the other."
RE-ISSUES
🎧 Kill Rock Stars re-issued La Forêt by Xiu Xiu, its first time on vinyl for 15 years. The album, which is about “death, doomed love and the decay of relationships”, is available now in a limited-edition sunset swirl vinyl reissue (1,000 copies pressed) that includes all the original tracks from their 2005 5RC release, as well as a download card with Drunk Commentary by Jamie Stewart.
PRE-ORDERS
🎧 Run For Cover announced All You Embrace, the new record by One Step Closer will be out May 17th. The first single from it, Leap Years, is streaming everywhere now.
NEW SIGNINGS
✍️ Raw Tapes added composer and performer Itzhak Ventura to their roster. Ventura is a ney specialist, mastering the Persian, Arabic and Turkish variants of the end-blown reed flute. He plays with the Jerusalem Orchestra East West, as well as recently appearing on Jarak Qaribak, the collaboration between Israeli singer Dudu Tassa and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. Their new LP, Ein-Sof, will be out on March 29th.
VIDEOS
🖥️ Run For Cover band Sadurn feature in the upcoming A24 horror movie I Saw The TV Glow, alongside Yeule, Sloppy Jane, Caroline Polachek and a score by Alex G.
The trailer for the film, directed by Jane Schoenbrun (who also made We're All Going to the World's Fair) dropped this week, watch it below and get excited:
INTERVIEWS
🎙️ Chicago-based songwriter Jessica Viscius spoke to Rolling Stone about One Million Love Songs, the new album she’s releasing soon with her band Bnny (Fire Talk) - talking love, loss and whether it's better to desire or be desired.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
🖥️ Where I choose a video I love from YouTube’s treasure trove of music videos, live performances and curiosities.
This week: stretching the definition of archive-worthy, sure, but very worthy of the spotlight - a beautiful live performance for Majestic Sessions from self taught Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Annahstasia (Sacred Bull Records)…
SHOWS, TOURS + EVENTS
💿 Backwoods Studioz have an Armand Hammer pop up tonight in NY:
🌵 Dots Per Inch announced details of their unofficial SXSW showcase on March 13th, which will feature “music, stunts, announcements, and limited-run merchandise.”
💿 nonclassical are celebrating the launch of the new Soosan Lolavar and Ruthless Jabiru album, Girl, with a party hosted by the artists in the heart of Shoreditch in London on March 15th. Get your hands on signed CDs and be the first to watch the music video for Undone | More Info
📆 UPCOMING INDUSTRY EVENTS
+ check out the 🎟 Events Directory for more conferences, festivals, record fairs, webinars, etc!
Mar 2nd ‣ The Brit Awards 2024 (London, UK)
Mar 3rd ‣ Guild of Music Supervisors Awards (LA, CA, US + Online)
Mar 6th - 10th ‣ Pitchfork Music Festival (Mexico City, Mexico)
Mar 8th - 16th ‣ SXSW (Austin, TX, US)
Mar 15th - 17th ‣ Lollapalooza Chile (Santiago, Chile)
Mar 15th - 17th ‣ Rolling Loud California (LA, CA, US)
Mar 17th - 20th ‣ MUSEXPO Creative Summit (Burbank, CA, US)
That’s all for this one! Stay safe and we’ll catch you again next week for more of the same.
- Adam & the Infinite Catalog crew