✨ IC Community Weekly #52: Libera Awards Nominees Edition
ft. our nomination for the Independent Champion award at A2IM's Libera Awards, new music from Rosali, Good Morning and Becca Mancari, a Graduation* internship, IC updates, shows, tours & more!
Hey and welcome to the latest edition of the IC Community Weekly!
In a week when we were thrilled to be nominated for the Independent Champion Award at A2IM’s Libera Awards - please vote for us here - alongside many other nominations for catalogs and artists in this here community, you were busy releasing lots of great music, announcing tours, and more.
Keep scrolling for a whole section dedicated to that news, alongside the usual great music, tours, and more, but first, a couple other bits from IC HQ:
Hunter took issue with Spotify’s “More Money At Every Level” claim from their new Loud & Clear report, and showed that ACTUALLYYY rich artists are getting richer, faster, at the expense of everyone else, sigh.
the Mechanicals tool has been updated to use the 2024 rates as the new default, while still making it easy to use previous year or custom rates if you need!
Reserves created within Infinite Catalog are now displayed on the income tab of payee summaries and statements, and can be tracked by catalogs and payees alike!
Next week marks the final week of our Q1 Special sale! Get a free trial now and sign up to get 30% off your first three months of IC, or check out this month’s IC Live Classes to see IC in all its glory.
…and the community:
Keeled Scales are holding a spring sale called The Spring Thing until this Sunday, March 24th, ft. $3 CDs, cassettes, & 7-inches, $6 CDs, $12/$15 vinyl and merch + much more! Help them make room for their new releases and shop the sale.
Other Record Labels are starting their second Labelmates cohort on April 2nd. It’s a 6-week intensive online course that’s limited to 12 students and designed for new and soon-to-be record labels - covering goals & niches, legal & setting up the company, branding, artists, A&R, manufacturing & distribution + marketing & promotion. Sign up here.
Music Biz are hosting a panel dedicated to the vibrant and thriving music industry of the Nordics. It’s called Fall in Love With the Nordics – And Make Business Out of It and is taking place March 26th at 11:30am ET. Register here for free.
A2IM LIBERA AWARDS
We’re absolutely thrilled to be nominated for the Independent Champion award at the A2IM Libera Awards this year alongside some other brilliant supporters and champions of indie labels and artists. If you're an A2IM member and want to see us win big at the world's largest indie music awards show, please vote for us here before April 3rd and keep your fingers crossed!
Other IC Community members/partners who’ve received nominations this year include:
Merge Records is nominated for Label of the Year (15+ employees), as well as Best Reissue and Best Creative Packaging for The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel, Best American Roots Record for the Hiss Golden Messenger album Jump for Joy and Best Heavy Record for One Day by Fucked Up.
Mexican Summer artist L’Rain is nominated for Record of the Year and Best Outlier Record for I Killed Your Dog and the Jess Williamson record Time Ain’t Accidental is nominated for Best Singer-Songwriter Record.
Innovative Leisure are nominated for Label of the Year (5 or fewer employees), Best Blues Record for the Nick Waterhouse album The Fooler and in the Breakthrough Artist category for BAMBII.
Captured Tracks are nominated for Label of the Year (6-14 employees) and Left Hand by Becca Mancari is up for Best Pop Record.
Topshelf Records are nominated for Label of the Year (5 or fewer employees) and The Window by Ratboys is in the running for Best Rock Record.
Bayonet Recordings are nominated for Label of the Year (5 or fewer employees).
Kill Rock Stars have a Best Country Record nod for the Mya Byrne album Rhinestone Tomboy.
Single Lock Records artists Blind Boys of Alabama are up for Best Spiritual Record for Echoes of the South.
Secretly Distribution are nominated in the Distributor of the Year category.
Polyinyl got a Best Folk Record nomination for Dysphoria Hoodie by Laura Jane Grace.
Congrats to all of the very deserving nominees 💖
Help them win (if you’re an A2IM member) by voting for them here.
👋 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!
JOBS IN THE COMMUNITY
🧑💻 Graduation* are looking for an organised, hard working, data driven intern with attention to detail and problem solving skills. To apply for the role working from their London office email your CV to careers@graduation.co.
NEW IC CATALOGS
A very warm 🤝 to…
Lil' Chief Records, an indie label formed in Auckland New Zealand in 2002 with the objective of championing local indie artists. Their roster now includes artists like Jonathan Bree, Princess Chelsea, The Ruby Suns, and Edmund Cake.
NEW RELEASES
ALBUMS
🎧 Merge released Bite Down, the excellent new record from North Carolina–based songwriter Rosali, which Stereogum named their album of the week, calling it “…one of those albums where every track feels like a highlight” and “…one of the most stirring albums of this young year.”
🎧 Merge are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Wye Oak record Shriek with a special expanded 2-LP reissue called Shriek: Variations, which is out today. It features five cuts from the album reimagined by GRAMMY-nominated composer Willliam Brittelle.
🎧 Fire Talk released a surprise Wild Pink EP entitled Strawberry Eraser, that features recent single Air Drumming Fix You.
🎧 Polyvinyl released the seventh Good Morning album, Good Morning Seven, today. It’s their most expansive project to date, clocking in at 17 tracks and was written, recorded, engineered, and produced solely by the Australian duo of Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons.
SINGLES
🎧 #veryjazzed released Pressure, the new single by “Greek radio's favourite soft rock band” Sillyboy’s Ghost Relatives, alongside an accompanying music video.
🎧 Captured Tracks released the new single from Nashville based singer-songwriter Becca Mancari. It’s a cover of the Tegan and Sara track Monday Monday Monday, which featured on their 2002 album If It Was You and sees their sweet vocals blend with gritty, distorted guitars.
🎧 Earth Libraries shared the new single from LA-based ambient surf rock artist Hot Wheels. It’s called Big Wave and is taken from debut album Sun Blonde, which hits shelves March 17th.
🎧 Merge released Unreliable, the new single by Jade Hairpins, the pop-kissed post-post-punk outfit helmed by Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk from Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up.
🎧 Joyful Noise released Tusko, a collaboration between Oneida and Minutemen founder and bassist Mike Watt, which finds them at “turbo-thrust levels of improv splatter-choogle” back in 2010 as part of their Ocropolis performances at much-missed UK Festival ATP.
BOOKS
📖 Brendan Greaves, one of the co-founders of Paradise of Bachelors and an eminently skilled folklorist and essayist, this week released Truckload of Art: The Life and Work of Terry Allen, the authorized (and first-ever) biography of the internationally acclaimed visual artist and iconoclastic musician (via Hachette Books). Brendan is hitting the road this spring for a series of readings, book signings, and discussions - details here.
PRE-ORDERS
🎧 Kill Rock Stars announced an upcoming album from recent addition to their roster Kate Nash. The British singer-songwriter’s fifth album 9 Sad Symphonies, set to release June 21st, was produced and mixed by Grammy winning Danish producer Frederik Thaae (K Flay, Jada, Crown The Empire).
Pre-order here and check out her new single/video Millions of Heartbeats, available everywhere now.
NEW SIGNINGS
✍️ Felte signed San Francisco band Aluminum and announced that their debut album Fully Beat is dropping soon.
INTERVIEWS
🎙️ Brendan Greaves, author of the aforementioned new book on Terry Allen (Paradise of Bachelors) spoke to Aquarium Drunkard about how the book came about, how Allen is one degree away from Charles Manson, and the artist’s lifelong collaboration and relationship with writer, actress, and artist Jo Harvey Allen.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
🖥️ Where I choose a video I love from YouTube’s treasure trove of music videos, live performances and curiosities.
This week: Angel Olsen (Jagjaguar) singing her intense break up song Creator, Destroyer, as well as If It's Alive, It Will from debut EP Strange Cacti, in Chicago’s Logan Square back in 2010.
SHOWS, TOURS + EVENTS
🚌 Brennan Wiedl (Kill Rock Stars) just started a US tour with Dirt Buyer (Bayonet) | TICKETS
🚌 Sinai Vessel (Keeled Scales) started their tour today, inc. a run of dates with Sun June (Run For Cover) and Wild Pink (Fire Talk) | TICKETS
🚌 American Football announced a string of UK and US shows later this year celebrating the 25th anniversary of their first record | TICKETS
📆 UPCOMING INDUSTRY EVENTS
+ check out the 🎟 Events Directory for more conferences, festivals, record fairs, webinars, etc!
Mar 21st - 23rd ‣ Future Echoes Conference 2024 (Norrköping, Sweden)
Mar 22nd - 24th ‣ Lollapalooza Brazil (Sao Paulo, BR)
Mar 22nd - 24th ‣ Ultra Music Festival (Miami, FL, US)
Mar 24th ‣ 53rd Annual JUNO Awards (Halifax, Canada)
Mar 28th - Apr 13th ‣ Savannah Music Festival (Savannah, GA, USA)
Apr 1st ‣ iHeartRadio Music Awards (LA, CA, US)
Apr 2nd - 6th ‣ Tin Pan South Songwriters Festival (Nashville, TN, 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