Jeeni Blog

Helping the next generation of talent to build a global fanbase

Award-Winning Photographer Shoots Via 'Virtual World'

/ By Andie Jeenius
Award-Winning Photographer Shoots Via 'Virtual World'

As the official photographer in the Jeeni team, Sharron Goodyear is an Award-Winning International Photographer and Film Maker, having won Fashion & Boudoir Photographer of the Year through the Master Photographer Association, with 14 years of industry experience. She has now taken her award-winning talents to shoots via the 'Virtual World' and Jeeni CEO, Shena Mitchell, put her to the test.

Sharron Goodyear - Award-winning photographer

Sharron specialises in working with entrepreneurs, musicians, performers and artists from around the world. Her photo-shoots are VIRTUAL, enabling her to work with a global client base, directing her subjects in their homes or on location, from her UK studio via the internet. Sharron took the below photographs of Shena, more than 50 miles from her subject! However, having an eye for positioning the camera, perfect attention to detail and the ability to put Shena or any subject at their ease. Eliminating any self-consciousness or embarrassment, meant the whole event was simple and painless. The results speak for themselves.

Shena Mitchell - CEO & Founding Partner of Jeeni

Shena described her virtual shoot experience, "As Founding Director of Jeeni, I wanted to make sure our subscribers are in great hands, so I booked a VIRTUAL shoot in the comfort of my own home. The intention was to increase my social media presence. I had so much fun and Sharron created over 30 shots to choose from. I picked my favourites and changed my profile picture on Facebook. Within a few hours I had gained 210+ likes, 134 comments and 4 shares. Instant success!"

Getting ahead of your competition, is tough on so many levels and from a marketing perspective, there comes a point when 'selfies' just aren't up to the task. Whether you need portraits for profiles, album covers or merchandise, investing in proper photography is always money well spent. It also allows you to get creative and experiment with a different 'look' or a new 'style' to help with your branding.

Whatever your skills and talents, Jeeni subscribers will be able to realise the benefits of Sharron's award-winning expertise via her website, plus she is offering a special rate of £95 to Jeeni subscribers for the month of March. So, book your slot, check your internet connection and double-check your teeth for spinach!

www.jeeni.com

www.sharrongoodyear.com

04
Jun

Stars back Jeeni streaming revolution!

DEE ANDERSONJEENI AMBASSADORActor, singer, daughter of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the creators of the cult series Thunderbirds. Founder of Glotime.tv, and fundraiser for children's charities including Great Ormond Street Hospital. Some stars are born, some are made, and some are just plain lucky. Dee Anderson is the daughter of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, creators of the classic children’s show Thunderbirds, and she’s a singing and acting star in her own right. Now she’s helping the next generation of undiscovered talent as children’s ambassador for entertainment start-up Jeeni. Jeeni is the ethical streamed music platform that gives back control to artists and audiences, and Dee Anderson joins a constellation of other stars and celebrities backing the project to boost the careers of talented kids. They include Tony Klinger, writer and director of The Who, movie ‘The Kids Are Alright’, media boss Roger Watson who has been responsible for 500 million record sales, and the woman who brought Apple Music to the world, Kelli Richards.

07
Apr

Naëve on Music, Performing and Life during 2020

Having described herself as an outcast in life and the music world we ask Naëve what have been the key challenges and new opportunities and ventures that would have never otherwise have been possible. We asked her to tell us about her experiences over the last year whilst we count down to Jeeni’s online JAM festival.  Naëve is a project born at the beginning of 2019 as a rebellion against all rules and constrictions that keeps us into our ‘tiny given little boxes’ since birth. As for the film ‘Big  Fish’, my fishbowl started to feel a little too tight, I needed a bigger one for myself. Labelling and categorising everything, has always been something I refused to comply to since I remember.  I’ve always been an outcast, in life and in the music I write and for this, I haven’t been  always understood.  Felt horrible for a while but, in time, I got that people use to fear what they do not understand, they fear change and what is new so, I made sure to be clearer and clearer for them in time. To my surprise, more and more people started to get closer.  I decided to keep the influences and ditch the genres, even following an emotional and logical tie to every single one of the genres that I rework in my music.  This brand new fusion sub-genre that I would call ‘Retro Groove’, is based pretty much on writing what comes to mind, binding the genres together and following simple melodic similarities. With what concerns lyrics writing, instrumentals is what inspires me. I believe that music in general, is an identification of feelings, emotions that often differ very distinctively from each other, other times, instead, they layer up so, when I write lyrics, I  first listen carefully to the musical part, until it makes me feel something or leads right back to specific memories. Then I write about that. Because I never pretend to be the Diva that I am not, what you find in my songs is exactly what I would say to you if I ever meet you in person. No filters, no beating around the bush, pretty much "what you see (or hear)  is what you get".  I am at a point in my life that I genuinely don’t care about what others may think or if I say something in a way, I may offend someone. I’m living my freedom happily and this, I  believe, is why I can write my songs in ways that have never been done before. I’m not the kind of person sugarcoating thoughts or happening, I try to make them feel sweeter and more bearable because, all in all, life is never like the cover of VOGUE. Also, more often than not, real heroes are the ones who are left unsung. I will sing and about them. I will celebrate them.  Even before my first release, the project caught the attention of several labels. Despite lockdown restrictions, I have already signed a record deal with an international indie label,  been proposed other two record deals and two publishing deals and received very much support from Blogs, pluggers, radios and so on. My fan base has started to grow steadily and I cannot be happier.   For the ‘big sound’ you can hear in my songs, you might think that a whole orchestra or something of the sort has been recorded in it. Truth is, that I work together with an  incredibly talented producer (and boy, oh boy if I am picky with producers) that manages  everytime to get in my head and help developing the initial idea according to the inputs,  lines and melodies I give to him.  For that very reason, I thought to be a good idea to involve a basic big band, usually, because big bands are pretty big so, I needed to recreate that studio sound live but without exceeding the number of players on stage. We are 11.  One of my unreleased songs has even got us into the Yamaha Boogie & Blues future stars competition finals, that was our very first live gig with this project, then the World shut down, exactly two days before the finals.  That was scary, a new born project could have collapsed at any time.  When a project is that new, without the chance of playing live shows, it becomes very  difficult to grow a proper fanbase.  ‘Joy’, my first single release, has been extremely risky to put out. The willingness for people to change is always extremely hard to achieve and I was very concerned about that.  I’m saying this because ‘Joy’ is a Gospel song, a genre that has always mostly been kept within Church doors. I took a leap of faith and... It worked. Many brothers and sisters from  Evangelic Communities around the World started to show their curiosity and support and it absolutely felt like winning the Euro Million!!  The idea before ‘Joy’ was something between the lines: ‘Wow, Gospel music is such beautiful uplifting music of hope, let’s bring it to everyone. That was the reason behind this song.  Thinking about it now, I feel very happy about how everything is progressing, mainly seeing how much interest people are having in my music.  I decided to continue to write during the lockdown and between them, when was possible and safe to go recording, I decided to continue and work about the messages that I want to pass to my supporters and so ‘L.A.M.E.’ was born.  Feminism is quite present in my work and more than ever is a concept, a way of life that needs to be supported today. Sometimes, I really believe that there has been a strong regression regarding how women are perceived in society and in the Music Industry. It seems, somehow, that very often women are seen as something that has to be used, not cherished. Thanks also to my upbringing (and to Madonna’s music), I understood that my value is decided by me, not everybody else and nevertheless by men (I don’t hate you, fellas, calm down) and that my life belongs to me and me only, I’m the only one who calls the shots end of story.  So, L.A.M.E. was born after a date gone wrong. The kind of date that starts well and ends terribly wrong...you know the feeling. That ended wrong because sometimes, when people can’t get what they want, they can be incredibly mean and they aim to target your self-esteem attempting to decrease your value. I didn’t let him. I wrote a song about the whole story. It’s an empowering song, for all women who have ever felt ‘not enough in their relationships, psychologically manipulated by ‘supposedly’ their better half. Sometimes,  people take advantage of our vulnerability to enforce their beliefs, it never ends well.  The message that I would give is that you only know your value, don’t let anyone get to you, you are much more than that!!  You can go out without makeup, without expensive clothes or cars, villas, a tan or a size 6  and a DD cup, because when you smile, all of a sudden the world stops. That is your strength as a woman and your beauty. You decide for your life, your happiness and yourself.  Being very open-minded, I learned to know people at their true value and not the label been given to them and also, I can’t stand injustice of any kind. I want to channel this empowering message also to the LGBTQ+ Community.   The reason behind that is that I have always been surrounded by friends from the  Community and some of them are among my best friends ever so, indirectly, I lived their struggle through them on how people are perceived in society.   Is embarrassing how, still in 2021, we cannot still be understanding enough to leave people the freedom to live a happy life while feeling comfortable and loved in their own skin.  Then the idea for the video of L.A.M.E. was born. I’ve been lucky enough to cast two incredible actors from the Community that are very successful artists, then the idea to interchange roles and to show that there is not fear in beauty and that doesn’t matter what  ‘form’ you get, your true beauty always shines. Another risky project, that bore the fruits I  was hoping for and here we are.   The video has been watched more than 6k times within 4 months time (thanks to this platform as well as Youtube and Vevo) and liked/voted more than 3k times so, really glad with the results.  From the live side, during the lockdown, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Hot Vox in support of War Child UK and I was very honoured to be part of this crowdfunding campaign, as it helped to raise money for children and their families hit by war all over the  World.  I believe there will be more of these charity events for Naëve once it will be safe again to  play live.  The collaboration with Hot Vox continued with an online ‘Listening party’ that will be  available to watch from the 21st of April from this link https://hotvox.co.uk/event/naeve-listening-party/ Plus a funny interview I did for them so, I believe is something you really want to watch. You know, when life gives you lemons.....  I started to learn to play other instruments during the lockdown as well and I am quite a  confident player now.  Also, I will be shortly in the studio for my 3rd official release, so, I will be in ‘planning mode’  for a while plus, a brand new music video and after, the tour.   The very first tour for Naëve since the project was born so, pretty excited and feeling  blessed for what is coming. Naëve will also be performing in the JAM festival which is a collaboration between Jeeni, AmplifyX and MultiView Media and will be held at 12 noon Los Angeles time, 8pm London time on Saturday, April 10th 2021. To find out more about the JAM Festival check out our events on Facebook. https://fb.me/e/1etPauFMV

05
Jun

Black equality - in and out of music.

by Cherie Hu. I normally open up these articles with a standard “Happy [day of the week]!” greeting, but that feels inappropriate today.I was going to publish a “normal” newsletter earlier this week featuring my latest music-tech articles, but found it necessary to take a backseat in service of much more important conversations happening around the world. I wanted to share some thoughts on the conversations and realizations I’ve had with people in music this week about the responsibilities that we have, both as individuals and as a collective industry, to do better.Respect to everyone who took time off on Blackout Tuesday. I don’t intend on publishing my opinion on how the day went, because I don’t see that as my role and frankly have a lot more researching and listening to do to better understand all the issues at hand.I personally decided to continue working on Tuesday, but with a focus on gathering data and evidence that could point to concrete areas where the music industry could improve with respect to Black equality. I elaborate on them below with some additional context.The issues that are top of mind for me focus on two actions that all of us can start doing right now in service of Black equality, both in and out of music: Following the money (economics), and tracking what you see (visibility).  1. Only 8% of corporate music execs are Black. Lack of racial diversity in the music industry’s corporate and executive ranks is something that many of us feel intuitively. But we actually know surprisingly little, in terms of being able to point to concrete numbers.So, on Tuesday, I got to work. I wrote down the names of all the board members and C-Suite executives across the top three record labels (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment) and their biggest imprints, as well as the top two concert promoters (Live Nation and AEG).There are 61 board members on my list. 53 of them are white, and only five of them — or 8% of the total — are Black: Jon Platt (Chairman/CEO, Sony/ATV Music Publishing)Nadia Rawlinson (Chief Human Resources Officer, Live Nation)Maverick Carter (Board Member, Live Nation)Jeffrey Harleston (General Counsel and EVP of Business & Legal Affairs, Universal Music Group)Kevin McDowell (EVP & Chief Administrative Officer, AEG). If we expand our scope to include President and Executive Vice President (EVP) roles as well, the percentage does improve slightly. The total number of executives on my expanded list with President/EVP roles increases to 121 people. 92 of them are white, while 22 (around 18% of the total) are Black. All the additional Black execs on this list work at label imprints, specifically RCA Records, Epic Records, Motown Records, Island Records and Atlantic Records. Contrast this to what we see in the public-facing artist landscape: The USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found earlier this year that underrepresented races and ethnicities actually over-index on the list of top-charting performers compared to the general U.S. population (56.1% versus 39.6%, respectively). The relative absence of Black leadership in the upper echelons of an industry like mainstream music that profits off of developing Black culture and talent is clearly a problem. A similar problem pervades the music industry: We can’t just put Black executives into “urban” roles.As in politics or any other part of business, it’s difficult to effect change around these problems without measurable benchmarks. So consider this a call for music-industry companies to start seriously measuring, and openly sharing, the state of their own racial equity.Trade body UK Music published a diversity report in 2018 covering both ethnicity and sex, which I remember sparked a lot of helpful conversations on a global level. The RIAA has yet to publish any aggregate diversity statistics about its own constituents in the U.S. This needs to change as soon as possible — which requires collective acknowledgement from major music companies that their internal whiteness is a serious issue that needs to be publicly addressed and resolved.Music companies should also take a tip from Google’s Diversity Report and measure not just the absolute number of Black employees, but also hiring and attrition rates across demographic groups.  2. The flow of money is moral, not just financial. It’s often said in politics, and must also be said in business: Budgets are moral documents.You can’t talk about anti-racism and Black inequality in music without talking about how the money flows. But don’t listen to me. Listen to the conversations that Black artists and music-industry professionals are having about what steps need to be taken after Blackout Tuesday — almost all of which involve improving economic equity and opportunity.Every Black person you meet in the industry, and probably many non-Black people as well, will likely have a story about an emerging Black artist they know who got thrown into disproportionately unfavorable contracts, and who had limited access to resources like lawyers, business managers and general industry education that could help them better evaluate deals.Going beyond anecdotes and actually gathering evidence of this rampant phenomenon is difficult, because it requires navigating a complicated web of NDAs and political relationships. But it’s also the first place people are turning in their demands for change.Nothing brings the issue of economic equity to light more than the surreal timing of Warner Music Group’s IPO, which launched the day after Blackout Tuesday.I’m not calling out Warner Music specifically as the biggest culprit in the industry, nor am I saying that an IPO is inherently racist. I’m thinking about more systemic issues in how this money will flow. All of the major label’s $1.9 billion IPO money will go to Blavatnik, an older white man who donated $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration campaign, and to a handful of individual, mostly white Warner Music executives who already had shares in the company. None of it will go to Warner Music on the organizational level, and so none of it will go to the artists whose back catalogs make the label such an attractive investment to Wall Street in the first place.Birdman Zoe, who manages the likes of Taz Taylor and Nick Mira, recommended that WMG shares be included in artist deals, not just a cash advance. Many others have recommended this in private conversations with me as well.In general, Black people's call for a serious, internal reflection on how much revenue from Black artists’ catalogs the labels are keeping for themselves should not be ignored. Also, as Sabri Ben-Achour puts it in a recent episode of Marketplace: “The stock market reflects the corporate economy of the future, not the real economy of today.” Hence why a billion-dollar IPO launching the day after a series of discussions about improving economic equity for Black artists feels so strange. It’s all connected.  3. We need to take equity in online events more seriously. Livestreaming as a format and paradigm is now top-of-mind for the music industry as the live-events sector continues to face an uncertain future. In general, video, not lean-back audio, is now the leading indicator of music culture. So we need to take the equity of what we see in these videos seriously.One area where I know many of you reading this can have an immediate impact is making virtual festival lineups more diverse.Several of the highest-profile virtual EDM festival lineups from the past few months — including Room Service Festival, SiriusXM’s Virtual DisDance and the first edition of Digital Mirage — were only 5% to 8% Black, and around 70% to 80% white. (The gender split for these three festivals also skewed 84% to 95% male.)It hasn’t all been doom and gloom, as there have been many examples of diverse lineups as well — from Bandsintown’s net.werk festival, which was curated by Dani Deahl and featured primarily women and people of color, to Global Citizen’s televised One World: Together At Home event, whose lineup was 35% celebrities of color and roughly split down the middle on gender.Overall, you would expect virtual festival and showcase lineups to be more equitable than IRL events, given that promoters have access to a much wider pool of talent without the logistical burden of having to fly everyone to the same physical location. But recent events have shown that this increased equity is not and will not be guaranteed, unless everyone involved draws a line, speaks out and pledges to do better.Artists with enough leverage need to be selective and turn down opportunities on lineups that are not diverse. And of course, promoters need to put in the work to diversify their curation and talent search in the first place.There also needs to be more collective action and accountability. The PRS Foundation’s Keychange initiative successfully brought together over 250 international music companies — including labels, festivals, conferences, symphony orchestras and more — to pledge towards achieving or maintaining a 50/50 gender balance in their programming, staff and/or artist rosters by 2022. A similar rally needs to happen for racial equality as well, especially for Black people in a time where so many Black artists are shaping popular culture.I don't have an answer for what the benchmark should be, but the fact that one doesn't exist or is not being measured is in itself an issue. Again, measuring and improving surface-level visibility certainly isn’t the only thing necessary for systemic change. But anything less feels insufficient. *** Here at Jeeni HQ, we think that Cheri is a brilliant writer and clearly knows her stuff so we will be curating her work for all our members. #jeeni #unsigned #musicians #performers #cheriehu #water&music #blacklivesmatter