Independent Musicians and Performers Community Group

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Helping the next generation of talent to build a global fanbase

Independent Musicians and Performers Community Group

The Independent Musicians and Performers Community (IMAP) has been set up by the founders of Jeeni. Our Community is for everyone and anyone creative: musicians, voice-artists, performers, poets, singer-songwriters ... the list is endless. We connect, collaborate, share and support each other, while we have some fun and make a real difference. We are a completely independent group and have no interest in political debate in this community. We encourage our members to share their original music and performances.

Jeeni launched IMAP 28 days ago today with the single purpose of helping and supporting fellow artists with relevant news, blogs, stories, videos and top tips on how to cope in these challenging times.

We scan the media every day for what support is available for musicians and performers. We make it our mission to wade through lengthy documents and policies so you don't have to, and we grab the main highlights and takeaways to make it easy for you to absorb the plethora of information swimming around.

The industry is being very responsive and coming up with lots of ideas, like allowing artists to keep earning by adding donate buttons on streaming platforms. Some organisations are making grants available, some are discounting their streaming platforms, whereas others are allowing artists and fans to sign up for free. We expect to see many online services partnering with one another to combine their overall membership offerings, such as Soundcloud and Twitch. And we are very interested to see what the major global companies do and how they respond to these new and unknown market conditions.

How practical these ideas are in real terms, only time will tell, and we will keep an eye out for scams, as in this very sad and challenging time it's inevitable that many will try to profit from COVID - 19, by introducing unethical and downrights crooked practices. We are making it our mission to name and shame projects and organisations that are under scrutiny and suspect, and encourage our members to do the same.

IMAP is an active community group with over 1.2K new members in 28 days 2.8K approved for sign up, and 2.2K posts, comments and reactions. We very much want our members to invite their friends, families and other artists, we are all in this together and your great ideas need to shared. It doesn't matter where you are around the globe, and we would love to hear more about what other community groups are doing to support their members.

Take a look at the Independent Musicians and Performers Community and join us today. You will be welcomed with open arms. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2529935880656436/about/

Shena and Mel

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05
Jun

How to grow your Facebook group.

Times are moving fast when it comes to social media, in particular the use of community groups to target your audiences with event, streaming and watch-parties going live every second of the day all around the globe. All of a sudden it feels like everyone except me is an expert at creating successful Facebook groups, so I decided I would take some time to try and unpick why are Facebook groups so successful. Had the groups been going for years and grown their members organically? Did they have large budgets and were they spending loads of money on Ads? Were they all marketing experts? Did they engage large teams of enthusiastic influencers? To my surprise I found that in most instances these assumptions were just not the case. Rock The Lock Down, founded by Lucy Pardoe & Ollie Hughes, is a great example, with over 887,000 members in less than 6 weeks. I finally had to admit I was missing the critical ingredients for a successful campaign. I only watched a selection of YouTube Videos, so not exhaustive, and I will watch some more tomorrow, but in the meantime to save you time, these were my key take-aways. 1. Make sure you take extra time to set up the group correctly, with an accurate, yet brief description. Check to make sure you have completed all sections, not just the about, which is the mistake I made. 2. Get as many people as possible to like your landing page, so that you can invite all of those people to your community group. Really simple and easy to use, but Facebook only allow you invite 50-100 in one day to stop you spamming. Which is what I also did!! 3. Make the group public, as you want as many members as possible to grow and contribute to organic growth. 4. Create as many discussions and engage with all your members as often as you can, be as helpful as possible, share and like and answer their questions. Be a guru, be supportive, open, honest and kind. 5. Use a bot to run competitions, contests, have freebies and giveaways , looping the bot back to join the group. 6. Join other relevant groups, share those groups and contribute as much knowledge and wisdom as you can helping members in those groups. It’s all about genuine and engaging conversation. Write guest posts and contribute wherever you can. Share and reuse your work on different sites, saving time and money. Keep the content helpful and meaningful. Cross-promote as often as you can and contact group's admin to share your group. 7. Test, test and trial Facebook ads that are targeted and specific, making sure you have set up demographics and location settings. 8. Create an exciting and interesting email campaign to support engagement from existing and new customer databases. 9. Interlink and entwine your groups posts and comments on You Tube and use back-links to improve your SEO. 10. Remember groups are for genuine enthusiasts who love music, or food, travel etc, and members do not want to see any information that is not relevant to what they love. At the end of the day this is all about them after all! In the meantime, please feel free to invite friends to our Independent Musicians and Performers Group and we will soon be at 2,000 members.

10
Jun

Jeeni Live Global Festival on 29 August 2020

Jeeni is proud to announce the next JEENI LIVE - our series of Free Festivals for Independent Musicians and Performers, where rising stars have a golden opportunity to step into the spotlight in front of a global audience, strut their stuff, stay safe and have fun. Best of all, they appear alongside some of our favourite superstar ambassadors. On 29th August 2020 we’ll be streaming the Jeeni Live Festival across music websites and social media. The event will be headlined by Sonique (Brit Award-Winner, Best Female Solo Artist) and Grammy Award-Winner Skyler Jett (hit-maker for Stevie Wonder, Celine Dion and Christina Aguillera) supported by Jeeni chart-toppers from both sides of the Atlantic. Showtimes: 21.00-23.00 GMT - 14.00-16.00 Los Angeles. With guest appearances from multi-award-winner Natasha Watts, the godfather of punk Jesus Hooligan, platinum-seller Daisy Chute, a blues genius we found down the pub, classical electro-diva Sarah Mallock, stadium favourites Filta, and a sensational new band with an average age of eight! More to be announced soon. All our performers will promote the event and share the live streaming to their fanbases, so we expecting lots of engagement. The live stream will also be saved on Jeeni.com, Jeeni Facebook and the Independent Musicians and Performers Group to replay later. This is our first event with our new Californian partners AmplifyX, the only FINRA and SEC compliant platform that allows investors to build a portfolio by directly funding musicians. The partnership was arranged by Kelli Richards, Jeeni Managing Director USA, who was mentored by Steve Jobs at Apple where she launched and managed the Apple music and entertainment division. Co-founder of AmplifyX Bobby Kamaris says, “Our companies run in an adjacent space helping independent artists, and our philosophies and motives are very very close. What you guys at Jeeni have done in putting it together and launching is actually incredible.” • Jeeni Live is a global festival of music.• Covid19 has closed live venues, so Jeeni Live goes out across social media and selected websites.• Jeeni Live gives equal exposure to brand new talent and world-class stars, with an exciting mix of new material and massive crowd-pleasers. • Jeeni Live reaches out across the whole range of styles and ages to deliver new audiences and new fans for our poll-winning artists.• No adverts, no hype, no rip-offs, no fakes. Jeeni - the ethical alternative.

12
Mar

Voices of 2021

BBC Sounds has just released it's longlist of nominees for the 'BBC Sound of 2021', a prophecy of who they believe will be filling your playlists for the upcoming year, from the best rising talent. Now in it's 19th year, this year's longlist was compiled by a panel of 161 industry experts, including former nominees Billie Eilish (2018) and Stormzy (2015). The winner will be announced in January on BBC News and BBC Radio 1. The 10 acts hoping to win the top spot are: Alfie Templeman - Indie PopBerwyn - Soul Poet / BalladsBree Runway - Trap / R&BDutchavelli - Rap / Hip-HopGirl In Red - Indie PopGreentea Peng - Psychedelic SoulGriff - Bedroom PopHolly Humberstone - Pop BalladsPa Salieu - Rap MaverickThe Lathums - Indie Band To be eligible, musicians must not have been the lead artist on a UK top 10 album, or more than one top 10 single, by 30 October 2020. Artists who have appeared on TV talent shows within the last three years are also ineligible. The top five will be revealed in the New Year on BBC Radio 1 and BBC News, with one artist announced each day from Sunday 3 January until the winner is unveiled on Thursday 7 January. Covid-19 has made launching a music career trickier than ever - and to date, only four of the nominated acts have played a headline gig, which explains the strong showing of bedroom and DIY artists on the list. 2020's winner, Celeste, also suffered setbacks from the pandemic hangover, as her new album release was delayed. Instead she chose to release well received tracks, 'Stop this Flame' and 'Little Runaway' to give us a taster of what is to come. She also became the first singer to ever record an original track 'A Little Love' for the John Lewis Christmas campaign. Her debut album, 'Not Your Muse' is now being released Feb 26th. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwuJFAsZD0k

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