Jeeni Blog

Helping the next generation of talent to build a global fanbase

How to Apply To Play Music Festivals & Events Across the World

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How to Apply To Play Music Festivals & Events Across the World

I found this great article on Di++O website with links to current UK and overseas opportunities. It's really useful and very informative, as it is up to date and also has direct links to the festival or event where you can apply - so super helpful.

Remember, before you apply to perform at any of these music festivals and events, be sure to read the application instructions and conditions carefully for the best chance of success. Some events may only accept submissions from artists of certain styles and genres, so make sure your act fits the bill before submitting your application.

CURRENT UK & EUROPE OPPORTUNITIES

Are You Listening? Festival | April 2020 | Reading, UK | Apply here

Live at Leeds | May 2020 | Leeds, UK | Apply here

Hanwell Hootie | May 2020 | London, UK | Apply here

Mello Festival | May 2020 | Worcestershire, UK | Apply here

Elderflower Fields | May 2020 | East Sussex, UK | Apply here

The Great Escape | May 2020 | Brighton, UK |Apply here

Sound City | May 2020 | Liverpool, UK | Apply here

Leestock | May 2020 | Suffolk, UK | Apply here

Wychwood Festival | May 2020 | Cheltenham, UK | Apply here

Camden Rocks | May 2020 | London, UK | Apply here

Long Division Festival | June 2020 | Wakefield, UK | Apply here

Sweden Rock | June 2020 | Sölvesborg, Sweden | Apply here

Eden Festival | June 2020 | Dumfries, Scotland | Apply here

Isle of Wight Festival | June 2020 | Isle of Wight | Apply here

Beacon Festival | June 2020 | Oxford, UK | Apply here

Sea Sessions | June 2020 | Donegal, Ireland | Apply here

Leigh Folk Festival | June 2020 | Essex, UK | Apply here

Black Deer Festival | June 2020 | Kent, UK | Apply here

Kendal Calling | July 2020 | Kendal, UK | Apply here

Y Not? Festival | July 2020 | Derbyshire, UK | Apply here

Ampthill Festival | July 2020 | Bedfordshire, UK | Apply here

EskFest | July 2020 | Cumbria, UK | Apply here

Nibley | July 2020 | Cotswolds, UK | Apply here

Daxonbury Festival | July 2020 | North Bedfordshire, UK | Apply here

Techfest | July 2020 | Nottinghamshire, UK | Apply here

El Dorado | July 2020 | Herefordshire, UK | Apply here

Ipswich Music Day | July 2020 | Ipswich, UK | Apply here

Barn On The Farm | July 2020 | Gloucester, UK | Apply here

Brainchild Festival | July 2020 | East Sussex, UK | Apply here

Not a Cult Festival | July 2020 | Worcestershire, UK | Apply here

Nass Festival | July 2020 | Somerset, UK | Apply here

Beat-Herder | July 2020 | Lancashire, UK | Apply here

Ashford Festival in the Park | July 2020 | Kent, UK | Apply here

Shankra Festival | July 2020 | Lostallo, Switzerland | Apply here

Nozstock | July 2020 | Herefordshire, UK | Apply here

Boomtown | August 2020 | Hampshire, UK | Apply here

110 Above | August 2020 | Leicestershire, UK | Apply here

Off Festival | August 2020 | Katowice, Poland | Apply here

Humber Street Sesh | August 2020 | Hull, UK | Apply here

Beyond the Woods | August 2020 | Lincolnshire, UK | Apply here

Farmer Phil’s Music Festival | August 2020 | Shrewsbury, UK | Apply here

Arctangent | August 2020 | Bristol, UK | Apply here

Green Man | August 2020 | Brecon, UK | Apply here

Beautiful Days | August 2020 | Devon, UK | Apply here

Weyfest | August 2020 | Surrey, UK | Apply here

Victorious | August 2020 | Portsmouth, UK | Apply here

Valley Fest | August 2020 | Bristol, UK | Apply here

Phoenix Festival | August 2020 | Cotswolds, UK | Apply here

Cambridge Folk Festival | August 2020 | Cambridge, UK | Apply here

Off The Tracks Festival | August 2020 | Leicestershire, UK | Apply here

End of the Road | September 2020 | Dorset, UK | Apply here

Illusive Festival | September 2020 | Northamptonshire, UK | Apply here

Worcester Music Festival | September 2020 | Worcester, UK | Apply here

Euroblast | September 2020 | Cologne, Germany | Apply here

Live at Heart | September 2020 |Örebro, Sweden | Apply here

Reeperbahn Festival | September 2020 | Hamburg, Germany | Apply here

Equinox Festival | September 2020 | Lincolnshire, UK | Apply here

Waves Vienna | September 2020 | Vienna, Austria | Apply here

Moseley Folk Festival | September 2020 | Birmingham | Apply here

Mercat de Musica | September 2020 | Barcelona, Spain | Apply here

Iceland Airwaves | November 2020 | Reykjavik, Iceland | Apply here

CURRENT USA, CANADA & SOUTH AMERICA OPPORTUNITIES

Tiny Lights Festival | June 2020 | Ymir, Canada | Apply here

Blue Ox Festival | June 2020 | Eau Claire, Wisconsin | Apply here

NXNE | June 2020 | Toronto, Canada | Apply here

Nelsonville Festival | June 2020 | Nelsonville, Ohio | Apply here

Epicenter Festival | May 2020 | Charlotte, North Carolina | Apply here

Music at the View | May 2020 | Tonasket, Washington | Apply here

Texas Music Showcase | July 2020 | San Antonio, Texas | Apply here

Red, White & Bluegrass Festival | July 2020 | Beaver Creek, Ohio | Apply here

Hopscotch | September 2020 | Raleigh, North Carolina | Apply here

Arise Music Festival | August 2020 | Loveland, Colarado | Apply here

Springfield Indie Soul Fest | August 2020 | Springfield, Massachusetts | Apply here

Rock al Parque | August 2020 | Bogota, Colombia | Apply here

Americanafest | September 2020 | Nashville, Tennesee | Apply here

Deadwood Jam | September 2020 | Deadwood, South Dakota | Apply here

Strawberry Music Festival | Spring/Fall Annually | California | Apply here

Joshua Tree Music Festival | Spring/Fall Annually | Joshua Tree, California | Apply here

CURRENT AUSTRALIA, AFRICA & ASIA OPPORTUNITIES

Bali Spirit Festival | April 2020 | Bali, Indonesia | Apply here

Cape Town Coffee Festival | May 2020 | Cape Town, South Africa | Apply here

Bayimba International Festival | August 2020 | Uganda | Apply here

Winter Fest | August 2020 | Lesotho | Apply here

Music Matters | September 2020 | Singapore | Apply here

Maldon Folk Festival | October 2020 | Maldon, VIC, Australia | Apply here

Mushroom Valley | October 2020 | Yalboroo, QLD, Australia | Apply here

Tablelands Folk Festival | October 2020 | Yungaburra, QLD, Australia | Apply here

Queenscliff Music Festival | November 2020 | Queenscliff, Vic, Australia | Apply here

Thanks Di++O Team for such a great article, we have sent links to your website so that our members can find out more. https://www.dittomusic.com/

Our next blog will pinpoint what you need to consider once you have applied and been accepted to play. We are going to create a check-list that our members can actually use. Best of luck and let us know how you got on.

23
Mar

Where Did All The Bands Go?

This month, Adam Levine of Maroon 5 caused a ripple when he was chatting to Apple Music's, Zane Lowe. Whilst referring to all the bands about in 2002 when they released their first album, he questioned, "where did all the bands go? I feel like they're a dying breed." After clarifying he meant bands, "in the pop limelight", it still managed to spark a mix of bemusement and outrage from some fellow artists. Maroon 5's Adam Levine - photo Mauricio Santana Though his remarks may have smarted somewhat, it can't be denied, he has a point! In the early 00's new bands were a dime a dozen, filling arenas and regularly collecting platinum discs. New TV talent shows such as Pop Idol and X Factor filled Saturday nights with girl groups and boy bands, but the trend is shifting. According to Dorian Lynskey in the Guardian, currently, there are nine groups in the UK Top 100 and only one in the Top 40. Two are the Killers and Fleetwood Mac, with songs 17 and 44 years old respectively, while the others are the last UK pop group standing (Little Mix), two four-man bands (Glass Animals, Kings of Leon), two dance groups (Rudimental, Clean Bandit) and two rap units (D-Block Europe, Bad Boy Chiller Crew). There are duos and trios, but made up of solo artists guesting with each other. In Spotify’s Top 50 most-played songs globally right now, there are only three groups (BTS, the Neighbourhood, and the Internet Money rap collective), and only six of the 42 artists on the latest Radio 1 playlist are bands: Wolf Alice, Haim, Royal Blood, Architects, London Grammar and the Snuts. Of course, radio and streaming are dominated by pop, rap and dance music but festival lineups don’t point to a golden age of bands, either. Of those that have emerged in the past decade, only half a dozen have headlined either Coachella, Reading/Leeds, Latitude, Download, Wireless or the main two stages at Glastonbury. That’s The 1975, Haim, alt-J, Rudimental, Bastille and Tame Impala, and the last of those is effectively a solo project. Only one band, the Lathums, appeared on the BBC’s annual tastemaking Sound of … longlist this year, which is not unusual: bands haven’t been in the majority since 2013. The album charts are still regularly topped by bands thanks to loyal fanbases who still buy physical formats – such as Mogwai, Architects and Kings of Leon in recent weeks – but not since 2016 has one hung on for a second week. So what happened? With even the largest, well known bands struggling to get into the Top 20 in the streaming world, could one theory be, solo artists are cheaper and easier to handle for the record labels? Apparently not, according to Dirty Hit label's, Jamie Osborne. His independent label is responsible for among others, Wolf Alice and The 1975, but he is still desperate to find the next band he can sign and develop. However, he's not finding it easy! The problem is, he says, there aren’t that many around. “It’s more likely now that a kid will make music in isolation because of technology. When I first met the 1975, they were all friends meeting in a room to make noise. So much is done in bedrooms these days, so you’re more likely to be by yourself.” The 1975 - photo Spotify Press Ben Mortimer, co-president of Polydor Records, says that cost is more of an issue for artists than for labels. “If you’re young and inspired to become a musician, you face a choice. If you go the band route, you need to find bandmates with a similar vision, you need expensive instruments and equipment, and you need to get out on the road to hone your craft. On the other hand, you could download Ableton [production software], shut your bedroom door and get creating straight away. Culture is shaped by technology.” So if the expenses are too high to even start a band, then rehearsal space and travel costs just add to the negatives. Does that mean bands and touring will only be for the rich, middle-class kids? “Social media has filled the hole, creating individual stars who are seen as more ‘authentic’ than anything the retro talent-show format could offer,” says Hannah Rose Ewens, author of Fangirls, a study of contemporary fandom. "Social media is built for individual self-expression. Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitter – and even the portrait orientation of a smartphone screen – give an advantage to single voices and faces while making group celebrity less legible.  Hannah Rose Ewens with her book 'Fangirls' The challenge posed by all pop cultural trends is to work out whether or not it is a permanent structural shift or just another phase. The right group at the right time, whether it is the Strokes or the Spice Girls, can change everything. In the short term, the pandemic has made it impossible for new bands to form and threatens the survival of the regional venue circuit on which they depend, while Brexit has thrown up expensive new obstacles for touring bands. Yet Jamie Oborne remains optimistic. “I’m excited about the wave of creativity that’s going to follow this period that we’ve just lived through,” he says. “I feel this hankering in youth culture for real experience and connection. I’m still quite the romantic when it comes to music. Look at Fontaines DC. I see a picture of them and wish I was in a band. It’s the same thing as walking down the street with your friends and feeling like you’re part of something. Anything’s possible.”

06
Jun

I have a confession to make.

Jeeni has returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds for helping new talent. Jeeni founding director Mel Croucher says, “Day 5 and we have reached 98% of our 100K target". If you want to see our pitch click HERE. Mel has been writing the best-loved column in top-selling tech magazines for over 30 years. Now he's agreed to share his work with all our members. He's a video games pioneer and musician, and to to find out more about Mel check out his website www.melcroucher.net. Here's one of Mel's latest! I have a confession to make. I have been pimping a young model, and I confess my shame. My pimping is the result of a moment of weakness. I’ve had models before, and I understand their capricious nature. One moment they are willing to perform across my desk, and the next they freeze and refuse to let me do what I want to do. But it has not been any fantasy performance that’s got me hooked, it has been the fantasy looks. I was bored. I wanted colour. I wanted make-up. I wanted dazzle and glitter. I wanted tribal tattoos, hot bubbles, glowing tubes and a whirling fan-dance. Forgive me, but I’ve pimped my computer.In 1909, Henry Ford declared, “I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the best designs that modern engineering can devise. And no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.” He then added his famous line, “The customer can have his car painted any colour he wants as long as it’s black.” And so they were. Painted black. When I was young, cars were still mostly black, apart from the odd spot of lipstick around the exhaust pipes of those used in suicide pacts. As for computer manufacturers, they all followed Henry Ford’s marketing strategy for half a century. Except their colour of choice was not black, but the sort of beige favoured by dead maggots. The exception was the ZX Spectrum which was black, but the keyboard really was made of dead maggots. Apart from that aberration, beige was the colour. In fact the beige box came to be used as a term of derision for desktops, implying dated, boring specifications. For example, IBM's early desktop computers were not only very beige indeed, but also very box-shaped indeed, and most PC clone manufacturers followed suit. As IBM and its imitators came to dominate the industry, beige boxes became the unquestioned norm for boring desktop computer design. Even early Apple Macs were beige boxes, until Apple took the revolutionary step in 1987 of switching to the even more boring shade of Chicken Poo By Moonlight. Not long after, equally boring videogame consoles took over the world, until there were so many revolting grey Nintendos and Segas and Playstations and Gameboys, that they had to be transported across deep space to be turned into landfill on distant moons. Meanwhile all Earthbound computers were still fifty shades of grey, until one day Apple changed everything.I remember the shock when their 1988 iMacs were launched. Suddenly we had a choice of computers that looked like see-through giant jellybabies, in a range of five neon colours called gangrene, monkeybum, impetigo, barbie and mince. And that was the end of the adult era in electronics, as a collective madness took over computer marketing. Now users are persuaded to buy machines not for what they do in the adult world, but for their infantile appearance. Users who are normally sane actually enjoy miniature coloured LEDs, winking and blinking through transparent windows like a pixie brothel. Tubes of bubbling, gaudy liquids snake their way through the computer’s guts like tapeworms on acid. Miniature spotlights illuminate cooling fans and heat-sinks from the inside out. These days a serious gamer will spend serious money on a serious PC, then corrupt the whole thing by spraying it with Plasti-Dip peelable, durable, non-slip, rubberised, multi-coloured spew. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have, but a bloke called Xephos made me do it. Let me explain further. I have been influenced by the newly popular phenomenon of celebrity PCs, where people buy a particular machine simply because their heroes favour it, endorse it or actually commission it in their name. For example one of the world’s most popular videogaming channels on YouTube is called The Yogscast. Last time I counted, it had more than seven and a half million subscribers and over six billion views, and that’s a whole lot of purchasing power. Their founder, this bloke called Xephos, got a business partner of Jeeni to create “the ultimate Yogscast PC range to live stream and play games all day.” And as the factory os not far from me, I went over to mock. But I stayed to pray, and found myself mesmerised by the bloody thing. Bloody as in bejewelled with animated red illuminations inside the see-through casing. Which is how I joined this PC pimping revolution.And even non-gamers are at it. Most regular folk, who normally wear sensible shoes and don’t indulge in bear-baiting or country music, they too have joined the pimping revolution by expressing their personal proclivities via their mobile phones. In the beginning, all mobiles were universally Henry Ford black. Now even old age pensioners wave customised casings around, all lipstick colours, sparkles and cutesy-poo creature decorations. At least, that’s what mine’s like. But I still suffer from a residual shame over my pimping habit, and like all instant gratification I feel guilty because of it. In fact while looking for a replacement machine recently, I have been quite attracted by one of those shapely models with a bit of sobriety, experience and bulk. And yes, before you ask, it’s black. Click HERE to visit or return to jeeni.com

02
Dec

Jeeni Offers Two Ways of Becoming a Jeenius to Suit Your Needs.

Depending on whether you’re an artist or a viewer, Jeeni has introduced more options of signing on, to suit your needs.  For our viewers, we have a huge range of features to make it as easy and ethical as possible to follow and support a massive roster of exciting and upcoming artists. And it’s absolutely free to sign up!   Jeeni allows anyone and everyone to create and share playlists of new artists from hundreds of different channels and genres from Afro to Zydeco. Enjoy uninterrupted, ad-free surfing and discovering with live sessions, exclusive gigs and masterclasses from award winning superstars. Simply make your free account and get going!  Discover fresh, unique artists that you’d otherwise never come across, share your discoveries with friends on social media and spread the word of Jeeni.  If you’re an artist, we offer an extensive and supportive promotion service, with ethics and respect in mind. For just $10 a month, Jeeni artists receive their own dedicated commercial showcase and personal Jeeni email address as well as a direct platform and publicity service to their fans and entire Jeeni audience.   Jeeni also provides a professional artist marketing suite with full analytics and reports so that you can track and manage how you’re received by your audience. Artists also receive automatic eligibility for Jeeni festivals and awards as well as access to Jeeni’s helpdesk service.  And we haven’t even got to the best part yet; Jeeni artists keep 100% of all sales income, 100% of all of their donations and have complete control over their creative rights!   Jeeni is first and foremost about the support and ethical treatment of artists as opposed to streaming services such as Spotify.  Find out more about your Jeeni viewer membership here: https://jeeni.com/setnjsazwems/ Find out more about your Jeeni artist membership here: https://jeeni.com/93oavw85jjhe/ Join Jeeni today and become a Jeenius!