KICKSTART your career: Introducing our super-star video wrangler Aleah MO

Jeeni Blog

Helping the next generation of talent to build a global fanbase

KICKSTART your career: Introducing our super-star video wrangler Aleah MO

JEENI are delighted to be employing with the Government’s Kickstart Scheme initiative.

Aleah Mo (she/her) was our first Kickstart recruit. Aleah is a 19-year-old dancer and dance teacher from Portsmouth. Since Aleah joined the team, JEENI has helped her to showcase her talent and keep 100% of the rewards.

Launched by Rishi Sunak last September as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government’s Kickstart Scheme provides funding to employers to create jobs for 16–24-year-olds who are receiving Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment.

As a fast-growing new business, still in its exciting dewy youth. JEENI are delighted to have signed up for the scheme. The successful Kickstart employees are taken on for initial placement of up to 6 months. And given training to learn new skills, and ongoing support to look for long-term, permanent work.

To qualify for the Kickstart Scheme, jobs offered must be brand new positions that were not previously available at the company. For JEENI, this works perfectly as the company is currently growing and expanding at a rapid rate. Meaning that these exciting new roles have evolved naturally.

Aleah joined Team JEENI in March. As one of our Marketing Assistants, she creates showcases for many different independent performers like herself. And she’s already using the skills she has learned so far to promote her own talent and services. With Kickstart Employees working for up to 25 hours per week. Aleah says her hours easily fit around her busy schedule of teaching and dancing.

“JEENI is such a great company and the hours I work really fit around my dance, which is really beneficial for me, because I am a teacher, so most evenings I am dancing as well as on the weekends. “
Aleah Mo.

The Movement Initiative

The Dance Company that Aleah dances for is called The Movement Initiative (TMI). TMI is a Charity Dance School located in Southsea, formed to help dancers fulfil their full potential. By providing opportunities, facilities, and classes for dancers to learn excel, and perform regardless of their age and ability. TMI are World Champions in the International Dance Organisation. Aleah is already using what she's learnt as a Marketing Assistant for JEENI to help promote her dance school and increase their following. As well as her own individual talent, all or free.

Aleah, along with some other dance school members, and a wide range of independent dancers will also be featuring in JEENI’s next online festival! Our first themed festival, the theme, of course, being DANCE which Aleah is “super-excited” about!

If you’re interested in working for JEENI, featuring in one of our upcoming festivals or just want to find out how we can help you promote your talents and services. Contact the Business Helpdesk here: https://jeeni.com/support/

To check out the full Inside Story Interview with Aleah Mo click here: Inside Story: Aleah Mo interview

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10
Aug

Jeeni reaches 50% of funding target in just a few hours.

Within hours of going public on Crowdcube Jeeni hit 50% of its overall £150K target. We launched our public raise at 10am this morning and we have already reached £75K. As you can imagine here at Jeeni HQ we are celebrating. After all our extremely hard work we are delighted that so many investors share our vision. Join them and help us reach our target. Check out our pitch here. https://bit.ly/3BhEeia Jeeni is a fast-growing entertainment company that rewards independent musicians and performers ethically and safely. Our achievements include: Over 4,000 active independent musicians and performersOver 2,300 brilliant artist showcasesOver 2.6million audience outreachOver 10,000 views in less than one hourManagement from senior roles at Apple, Chrysalis Records, Arista Records and EMI MusicGRAMMY-Award Winning ambassadors and supportersCurrent membership and audience growth rate of 4% per monthOver £350,000 raised in previous rounds for less than 10% equity, with a current company valuation of £4.5million We invite you to help us accelerate our success and scale up for the best benefit of our members and investors. Join our fast-growing family of 22 lead investors and over 400 smaller investors, and we look forward to answering any questions you may have. Please check out our pitch here: https://bit.ly/3BhEeia #Jeeni #invest #ethical #alternative #musicians #performers #crowdcube #crowdfunding

05
Jun

As the Coronavirus Pandemic directly impacts Songwriters, Musicians and Artists - what can we do to help?

Reluctantly we cannot avoid a discussion about the impact of Coronavirus. Yesterday my son flew to Manilla in the Philippines where there is a state of emergency and where the community will be placed under quarantine for one month. At Jeeni HQ, key personnel have decided to self-isolate and social distance for the sake of our family, our loved ones and the business. It's all become very real, very fast. I have handpicked some relevant articles for our members, but it's a bit doom and gloom I am afraid. John Ochoa states: "By now, the detrimental effects of the global coronavirus pandemic on the music industry are loudly heard. Major festivals around the world are postponing or outright cancelling their 2020 editions. This month alone, Coachella and Stagecoach, Ultra Music Festival, SXSW, Lollapalooza Argentina, Treefort Music Fest, Brussels' Listen! Festival and several other major events were called off or postponed. The aftermath has impacted everything from music conferences and award shows—this year's Winter Music Conference, ASCAP Experience, Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and BMI Latin Awards were all cancelled or postponed—while the amount of cancelled national and international tours continues to grow seemingly on the daily. As the coronavirus continues to spread, so too do its ramifications on the music industry. While industry experts and analysts are projecting that the live concert business could stand to lose billions, the financial fallout is virtually immeasurable at this point". http://bit.ly/2U1EH38 Norton and Denham conclude: "The coronavirus pandemic is scary for many who live on tight margins or don’t have the security of a steady paycheck. That includes independent musicians, venue owners, promoters, and others whose livelihood depends on a thriving and functioning arts and music scene". http://bit.ly/2IMuSAW The Digital Fix has started a discussion about how we can help? They say that: "We should buy physical CDs or downloads enabling artists to keep the money for themselves. and invite every band/artist to share their music with links to buy". http://bit.ly/3aW501o But is that enough, surely we can do more? What about lobbying the streaming services that pay artists peanuts. This could be the trigger to get them to offer some real help. Let's have some positive proposals from this community. Online collabouration instead of face to face rehearsals and jams? How to help our more vulnerable members get through if things get really tough? Over to you. Retro microphone on stage in restaurant. Blurred background

06
Jun

My grandfather was killed by a rubbish truck.

Jeeni has returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds for helping new talent. Jeeni founding director Mel Croucher says, “I admit we’re ahead of our original schedule, but there’s still so much more to do. We need to scale our online platform globally now and build our mass artist showcases. Then we can hit all our targets, and give our new artists the recognition they deserve.” 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 Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Croucher. Here’s one of Mel’s latest! One bright Autumn morning, my grandfather was killed by a rubbish truck. He got run over crossing the road on his regular walk to work. He was 84. And I am comforted to know that he loved his work as much as he loved his walk. As for me, I have yet to reach that ripe old age but I am still working most hours, most days. It's not so much that I love my work, more that I don't know what else to do. When I was younger, so much younger than today, I was promised a sci-fi world where all labour would be performed by robots, leaving us humans to enjoy a more meaningful existence. Before my grandfather was born, Karl Marx wrote that in a mechanised society workers would be freed from the monotony of work to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, criticise after dinner.” My grandfather certainly never saw such a sci-fi world or Marxist society, and I'm still waiting for it. But the way things are going I may not have to wait much longer for robots to take over the tedium of work. Judging by their behaviour, I suspect that most telemarketers, receptionists, estate agents and bar tenders were replaced by robots ages ago. And for drivers, machine operators and manual workers, it can only be only a matter of time. The first robot aircraft pilot took to the skies then navigated flawlessly and landed safely way back in 1947. Robots have been successfully conducting complex heart surgery since 2004. Artificial intelligence has already reached the cognitive power of a nine year-old human, in which case it is qualified to run for President of the USA in November. But do we really need political leaders to tell us how best to fill our waking hours? If we can develop all these technological wonders then we should be smart enough to work it out for ourselves. Our waking hours are dominated by work, whether we are in work or not. Strikers are depicted as troublemakers. Artists are depicted as idle. The poor are depicted as scroungers. The state cajoles the unemployed, the sick and the disabled to get off their arses and work. We are educated with the goal of work in mind, then having worked all our lives we are grudgingly handed back a mingy pension which we paid for in the first place. The idealised worker works in order to pay the childminder, the Deliveroo driver, the dog walker, the baker, the brewer, the app maker, because the idealised worker has no time left for such things. The idealised worker is too busy working to do any of these things for herself. For huge numbers of us the significance of the old certainties of community, religion, politics, and even family, have all fallen away to be replaced by work. For huge numbers of us work is how we give our lives meaning, while at the same time work has become more precarious, more impersonal, more stressful, and the app-driven gig economy is a perfect example of this. Yet everybody knows that automation is already capable of doing most manual jobs of work, and now artificial intelligence is predicted as achieving the capability of taking over most desk-bound jobs too. Since the pandemic, the entire framework of work is falling apart. But as a species we are not hardwired to work for a living. We never have been. We were lied to by those who said we must work, either to deserve a mythological afterlife, or protect an artificial realm, or for supposed honour, or someone else's glory, or for tokens of currency that can only be spent at the store owned by the company that issues those tokens in the first place. But of course all of those motivations are a con. And an obvious con at that. So here's the thing. Now we have cheap reliable technology, let's get all the robots to do as much of the muscle work as they can, and let's get all the artificial intelligences to do as much of the brain work as they can. Then let's redistribute the remaining working hours evenly to we the people, and in return pay ourselves some of that fabricated stuff called money so we can buy good food and decent shelter. By my reckoning six hours a day, three days a week will do nicely to pick up the slack left by the robots. Work needn't be useless. Work includes child-rearing, caring for the elderly and protecting the vulnerable. It also includes growing food, dreaming up new businesses and fixing the tap. And work includes creating music and dance and poetry and streaming it on Jeeni.com. It is self-evident that all valid work is worth the same valid reward. This is not a Marxist idea, or even a socialist proposal. It's the Tories who bang on about work being such a good thing and everyone pulling their weight, and I completely agree with them. Margaret Thatcher, that champion of work culture, said, “The heresies of one period become the orthodoxies of the next.” Yes indeedy, so bring on the robots and the electronic brains. If work is such a good thing then let everyone have a go for a few hours a week for a universal payment. And don't worry about how the payment is distributed, the accounts have all been reckoned by computers for years. Click HERE to visit or return to jeeni.com

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