Artist Focus: Alana Sukul

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Artist Focus: Alana Sukul

Stirring together funk, dancehall and electronic ingredients, Alana Sukul is rapidly building momentum with her unique take on modern pop.

Brand new to Jeeni, Alana Sukul has contributed five new tracks to several of our channels due to her music casting such a huge stylistic net. Born and raised in Fulham, Alana is currently studying Popular Performance, Vocals at BIMM, London where she continues to hone her already impressive skills as a vocalist, instrumentalist, producer and songwriter. Only recently, for her more dancehall inspired tracks, has Alana used external talent in the form of a producer to help her capture the tone and intention she has in mind. Aside from that, Alana is a total DIY bedroom pop artist and has done extraordinarily well for herself, particularly with her recent track, ‘Closer’ which currently has over 50,000 listens. Check out Alana’s Jeeni showcase here: https://jeeni.com/showcase/alana-sukul/

The poeticism in Alana’s lyrics is perfect for expressing emotive imagery that plain language simply can’t. ‘Emotions, heavy like water and you let me drown’, this particular line from ‘Healing’ seems reminiscent of the Mexican idiom, ‘blood is thicker than water’ meaning that family bonds are stronger than that of friends or love; the connection between the two adages is especially relevant considering the heart-broken yet regenerative narrative of this stellar track from 2020.

Although it would seem that the double single of the aforementioned ‘Healing’ and ‘IDNYT’ is Alana’s first release, she actually created a since-deleted concept project in college, as Alana puts it herself, “I made my first EP called ‘Genesis’ purely based around the struggle of mental health and how it can take a toll on one person.’

Nobly, Alana decided that the EP could be too honest and beak a project for fans to initially be exposed to, “I decided at 19 to remove the EP since I wanted to become a better inspiration for those who listen to my music and encourage them more lightly”. Ironically however, the ‘Genesis’ project and the creative decision that it inspired still formed her origin as an artist as is inspired her to begin again with a new mindset. This is when Alana began to work on ‘Healing’ and ‘IDNYT’ from her bedroom.

Alana’s broad sense of style is of no surprise when you consider the colourful collection of inspirations that she collected growing up. Motown, soul and hip-hop have influenced a lot of creative choices from Alana, however Caribbean-originated genres literally run through the veins of her more recent singles. Alana grew up with a variety of Caribbean styles thanks to her parents, “dancehall, soca and bashment have greatly influenced me since my parents are from the Caribbean”.

Alana also has an extensive list of artists she looks up to and dreams to collaborate with, “Vocally, my favourite artists nowadays who have impacted me would be Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Kehlani, H.E.R, Beyoncé and so much more.” Alana specifically credits Korean group, BTS for inspiring more in-depth meaning behind her music and lyrics.

The newest track from Alana, ‘Good to you’ is an atmospheric and stunning single and is available on streaming platforms now. Check it out on Jeeni here: https://jeeni.com/good-to-you-alana-sukul/?channel=alana-sukul&rtn=btasc&artist=alana-sukul

How can Jeeni support artists like Alana Sukul?

JEENI is a multi-channel platform for original entertainment on demand. We’re a direct service between creatives and the global audience.

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• We give creatives, independent artists and performers a showcase for their talent and services. And they keep 100% of everything they make.
• We empower our audience and reward them every step of the way.
• We promise to treat our members ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect.
• Access to artist liaison and a supportive marketing team.

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17
Jan

Invest in JEENI

Grab your share of JEENI - the ethical streaming entertainment platform. Our new funding round is about to go live on Crowdcube. We've been approved by market-leaders Crowdcube and Seed Legals for our funding vision and due diligence, and our company value has nowgrown from £2.4million to £5million. Thanks to advance pledges from our wonderful Jeeni investors and followers, we've already reached £80,000 of our £150,000 target in less than 3 days. Now we want to reach 70% of our target before we go live, which means we’re likely to overfund with Crowdcube in record-breaking time, just like we have done in our previous rounds. The value of Jeeni lies in our IP and user databases, and here’s where these stand at the start of the 2023.• 4million total audience access across all media.• 200,000 Jeeni artist online followers.• 57,000 Jeeni partner online followers.• 20,000 Jeeni business online followers.• 5,000 registered independent musicians and performers.• 4,000 registered social media champions.• 2,500 artist showcases.• 500 award nominees.We have money in the bank, no loans, no debt, no creditors, no factor-invoicing, and a zero burn-rate. We will use your investment to expand our databases and boost our value for exit by acquisition. We invite you to join in now, before we go live on Crowdcube, so simply email shena@jeeni.com with the amount you’d like to pledge, and she’ll add you to our priority list. We look forward to hearing from you and welcoming you on board!

04
Jun

A $0.003 reward?! We’re Twitching at the thought!

Twitch has always been popular amongst the gaming community. It was created initially in 2011 as a platform for gamers to use in order to live stream as well as broadcast live Esports events and competitions and has since retained on average 15million daily users. With so much more of our time spent online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Twitch has expanded in regard to what they broadcast and live stream: talk shows are growing in popularity as well as live streamed music to name but a couple. As the date for the resumption of normality approaches and with it the reopening of concert halls and live shows, one can speculate as to what will happen to those artists that have decided to make use of these live streaming platforms as a source of income. Twitch users reportedly spend three times as much time on the platform as on Sportify and YouTube so the potential for it to be a very lucrative platform for music makers and artists is what has been looked into by Will Page, an economist who runs Tarzan Economics. He worked alongside various teams in order to understand how live streaming and live music may co-exist in the future. “Live streaming won’t go away when live music returns.” -Will Page In 2002, one of the first music streaming services Rhapsody, offered a $9.99 monthly price which is the same as what we see today for similar music streaming services. What is provided is also pretty much the same as what was offered in 2002; fans remain largely disconnected from their favourite artists, they are unable to offer direct compensation to creators, and ‘cross-usage’ occurs frequently as a listener is often subscribed to multiple platforms. “None of the on-demand streaming services that have since sprung up enable immediate engagement, this is a relic of the music industry of old.” -Will Page User engagement is something that both Twitch and Jeeni offer, and not only does it allow the fans to be more involved with the artists they love, but it allows the artists to be fairly compensated, a huge issue which is now being petitioned against by the Broken Record Campaign. See our last blog post for more information and ways that you can support the campaign. According to Will Page, the typical music streaming model has approached the way in which artist are compensated in one way: “the platform aggregates all the streaming data and revenues from a specific market and product over a specific time period, divides an artist’s share by that sum, and allocates revenues proportionately. Get 1% of all the streams, and you’ll get 1% of all the money. This has spurred much debate within the industry, as heavy streamers are effectively subsidised by light streamers, or as Quartz controversially put it: Your Spotify and Apple Music subscriptions pay artists you never listen to.” In essence, the modelling simply just isn’t fair, and neither rewards the artists or their fans for supporting them. The way in which Twitch brings in money, however, varies across three methods similar to Jeeni: Creator Channel Subscriptions, Bits allow users to support creators directly on the service, and advertising. Will Page made a comparison between creator earnings on Twitch, which average at $0.15 per-hour-per-user, with that of global streaming services at which the rate per-stream is set at roughly $0.003. By taking the $0.003 per stream and multiplying by 17 (assuming a song lasts 3 minutes this equates to an hour of listening time), then applying an average 20% royalty rate, this results in a creator’s “revenue-per-hour listened” at just $0.01. My jaw dropped, did yours? Twitch has proved it can monetise over 10 times better than music streaming, however this only applies to creators’ most loyal fans that tune in on a regular basis. "If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year." -Kevin Kelly, The Technium, 2008 Do you want to spend hours watching your favourite gamer and at the same time, fairly compensate and reward them for their time and effort? Well of course. What Twitch does for gamers, we want to do for music makers and artists here at Jeeni. Look out Twitch, we’ll meet you at the finish line.

12
Mar

Kings of Leon Post Teasers of New Material

It's been 4 years since the Nashville rock legends have released any official new material, but this week sees them releasing snippets of new singles. The Kings of Leon have so far posted three teasers of new material over the holidays, which have fans eagerly awaiting their arrival on 7 January 2021. 'Walls' was their last album, which sold over 77,000 units in it's first week. In March 2020, the band shared a live recording of a new song, 'Going Nowhere' The performance was recorded in their hometown of Nashville and featured only frontman Caleb Followill, on acoustic guitar. It's been a long wait for their fans. The first post was a snippet of the new single, 'Must Catch the Bandit' on 25 December with all the signature sounds of previous Kings mega-hits. “Blame it on the holiday ‘cheer’, but I just feel like sharing,” bassist Jared Followill tweeted on Christmas Day (December 25). @kingsofleon then tweeted ‘the w8 is nearly over’ TEN MONTHS ago. Enough.” https://www.instagram.com/kingsofleon/ On New Year's Day, the second teaser was released, 'Feel The Way You Do' and today, third track 'Dancing in Your Head' has just dropped. These two tracks have a mellow sound with some thoughtful melodies and riffs. The video clips are all be black and white so far, sitting within simple frames and bold graphic type. 'Must catch The Bandit' has already clocked up over 145k views. In June 2020, the Kings of Leon were due to headline the Finsbury Park Festival, their first London performance since 2017, but as with all the summer festivals, the pandemic cause another postponement. Announcing the cancellation in May, promoter Festival Republic said they were 'working hard' with Kings Of Leon to arrange a new show. There are five more days to the official release date of this highly anticipated eighth album, so can we expect a new track each day - let's hope so?! www.jeeni.com

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