Artist Focus: Ariana May - Singer, Songwriter

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Artist Focus: Ariana May - Singer, Songwriter

Ariana May is a 16-year-old British singer-songwriter whose classical training in piano and singing from an early age has culminated in a deep love of composing and performing. Her style is a pot-pourri of alternative, pop, indie, rock and folk music. Ariana has a wide compass of influences: ranging from Kate Bush, Supertramp, AURORA and Birdy to Johannes Brahms, Leonard Bernstein, Michael Legrand, John Barry and Justin Hurwitz.

Her passion for musicals and film soundtracks has led her to work on writing and orchestrating her own musical based on a classical novel, set in modern-day. Loving poetry so passionately has made her profoundly invested in writing metaphorical lyrics to help portray the emotion in her songs. Ariana May’s aim is for her songs to move people and to help free their trapped emotions.

“Express yourself honestly and without any inhibitions” is Ariana May’s motto.

Suffolk Bay is Ariana May's debut single, a highly nostalgic song about reminiscing over a romance that never even happened. The synergy between the wistful tune and the crashing waves will unlock your forgotten memories.

You can watch our full interview with Ariana May here: Ariana May Inside Story Interview. Where she talked about her influences, inspirations and how platforms like Jeeni are helping artists like her to promote their work to a wider audience.

Check out Ariana’s Showcase at: https://jeeni.com/showcase/arianamay/

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12
Mar

10 of the Best for 2020

It’s that time of year, when we all start to look back and take stock of the offerings of 2020. Pandemic and lockdowns dominated but music was the tonic. Having checked in with various sites and bloggers, there is definitely a small group of albums in which at least one, has cropped up in almost everyone’s ‘Best of 2020’ lists. In no particular order, are 10 albums which got many of through lockdown, isolation, Black Lives Matter and political marches, election fatigue, uncertainty, love and loss. It’s an eclectic mix, offering view points from varied angles and experiences, including disagreement, hope and ultimately, acceptance. Any of these make your list? Let us know your thoughts and favourites in the comments below. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud After ditching her demons, her angst and finding sobriety, Katie Crutchfield moved herself and her partner Kevin Morby back to Kansas City, USA and created a brand new sound which focuses on her newfound optimism whilst reaffirming her roots in Birmingham, Alabama and her years of being on tour around the world. What she serves up on 'Saint Cloud' is a gentle alt. folk catalogue, which many are claiming is her best writing yet. Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters Well known for her reclusive tendencies, Fiona Apple had created and recorded ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’, her masterpiece lockdown album on her own at her Venice Beach home, before we’d even stock piled our bog roll! However, the tracks cry of liberation rather than confinement and they include a menagerie of ambient sounds, snarls, harmonies and even a dog bark, but still meet the brutality of life, head on. Featuring in many of the top music industry bloggers ‘Best of 2020’ selections, this album must be doing something right? Run the Jewels – RTJ4 Two years in the making, Run the Jewels album RTJ4 came as a gift and it’s timing was perfect. Offered up for free (as they do with all their albums) two days before it’s official release, it quickly became the Hip-Hop album of the year. 2020 has been a mind-fuck and this album brings all of that to one place, not because or in spite of, the Black Lives Matter movement, but alongside it. Killer Mike and El-P, known for their hardcore, revolutionary lyrics telling you not just how it is, but how it should and will be. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher Following on from the huge success of her first album, this busy gal has pitched it perfectly. Clever lyrics from Phoebe Bridgers, mean her release of ‘Punisher’ offers up tracks which are specific, but have individual and solid stories. This twentysomething offers her peers some solace with her funny, dreamy, sometimes dark take on the world but is relevant and appealing. Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia Taking the influences of previous Pop Goddesses, Madonna and Kylie Minogue, with the production skills of amongst others, Mark Ronson, creating an album which ‘feels like a dance class’ was a certainty with Future Nostalgia. Flavours of disco, funk, new wave and house bring nothing but fun from the past, into the present and onto the future. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) has placed ‘Set My Heart on Fire Immediately’ firmly in the alt-pop camp, but blends it with synth-pop, hefty guitar rifts and baroque harpsichord flounces. Hadreas vocal range is fabulous and leaves the listener eager for his next project. Deftones – Ohms The Deftones have brought back some hard-rocking guitar and bass riffs on their new album ‘Ohms’. After a 10-year hiatus, this will please the fans of their 2000 album White Pony. Their constant evolving and experimenting brings a revitalised sound to this new album, which will garner them new fans and satisfy their existing devotees. Thundercat – It Is What It Is Following on from his successful 2017 album ‘Drunk’, Stephen Bruner’s (aka Thundercat) fourth album brings an impressive cast of collaborators including Childish Gambino, Ty Dolla $ign and Kamasi Washington adding to the fun, jazz fusion vibes but also remembering the loss of his close friend Mac Miller is 2018 in the track ‘Fair Chance’. The Weeknd – After Hours Following on from 2016’s ‘Starboy’ and his 2018 EP ‘My Dear Melancholy’, The Weekend’s new album is a tiny swerve in a different direction and not what many people were expecting from the talented Canadian. Offering introspection and an open spirit, you can’t help but be wrapped in the adventure. Lil Uzi Vert – Eternal Atake Lil Uzi Vert’s highly anticipated follow up to his 2017 debut album ‘Luv is Rage 2’ is here. ‘Eternal Lake’ offers witty punchlines, cosmic beats, rythyms, melodies and hooks which cleverly stay with you even after the track has finished. Old themes with new ideas, make this album exciting, familiar and a definite classic.

31
Jul

NEW OPERA ACHIEVES ROCK STAR STATUS

It's the sort of statistic that music promoters dream of. An audience of ten thousand in less than one hour, and for a first-time performance. But this massive audience didn't turn up to watch a new boy band or the latest rap sensation, they came to the opera! A brand new opera called Spring Street is set in Manhattan, and it mixes classical arias, string quartets, jazz, blues and even acid rock. The opera was streamed on Jeeni, the self-styled "ethical alternative" to the big streaming giants, and opera composer Pete Wyer is ecstatic about Jeeni’s methodology and success. “I’m really thrilled. My expectation was we’d get to the magic 10,000 mark in a month, but this is quite incredible - especially when I compare it to operas I’ve had performed on stage! Without Jeeni’s help my piece might be languishing with a few hundred hits.” Wyer is being modest. An award-winning composer for the English National Ballet and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, his biggest audience before the Jeeni event was when 60,000 people enjoyed his celebration Liverpool waterfront concert, and the performance and publicity costs for that were considerable. By contrast, the Jeeni audience for his new event has already topped 66,000 and the costs have been zero. Everything has been achieved by the publicity and marketing systems built in to the Jeeni platform, which makes it unique when compared with the likes of Spotify or Netflix. Pete Wyer continues, "I looked at the Jeeni platform doing really good work for independent artists, and the more I learned the more I liked. It's been a very happy experience." The opera stars the soprano and triple-GRAMMY award-winner Maren Montalbano, who says, "Power is shifting from large organisations to the individual, and platforms like Jeeni are on the rise because they give artists the opportunity to lift themselves up and lift each other up." Her co-star, the bass-baritone and Netflix superhero Heday Inoue adds, "Jeeni is allowing us to have more exposure. I think it's amazing, and I'm really, really happy to be part of it." What is even more amazing is the fact that the cast and musicians have never actually met except on the Jeeni platform. Everything was composed, rehearsed and performed remotely in lockdown. Jeeni founder Shena Mitchell says, “When we first launched Jeeni a few months ago, it took days to hit audience figures of ten thousand for an online concert or festival, and I was delighted with that. But here we are, achieving the same thing in under an hour, and for an unknown opera. Imagine what we can do next. We already have more than two thousand artist showcases and an audience outreach of over two million." Now Jeeni.com needs to scale up to meet the technical demands for handling more artists and bigger audiences, so they have turned to crowdfunding. Shena Mitchell says, "Everybody knows that the big streaming companies rip artists off. We don't do that. Our artists keep 100% of everything they earn with us. Now we are allowing the public to invest as little as £10 to buy a part of us, and own a stake in what could be the ethical future of entertainment.” More information: shena@jeeni.comjeeni.com/investjeeni.com/springstreet *Capital at Risk

12
Oct

Jeeni Monthy Round-Up, September

Welcome to our new monthly blog update where we will discuss the latest news on topics such as streaming, music, performing, tech and all the other industries Jeeni aims to support. Firstly, seeing as this is the beginning of the monthly round-ups we have broadened our news to cover the last few months. We wanted to begin by highlighting the long-awaited reopening of live music venues and the return of festivals to the UK! A Mast Journal on COVID-19 stated, “the COVID-19 outbreak has been framed primarily as an economic crisis, in which the music-based products and practices through which revenue is derived have been abruptly and, arguably, irreparably disrupted by a global public health emergency.” Many musicians struggled financially during this time, with many pleading to the public to help the industry. Thankfully by June 2021, the venues were able to reopen and festivals such as Reading, TRNSMT and Victorious were able to run once again. Members of Team Jeeni did an amazing job at Victorious, interviewing artists and showing our support to the industry and independent musicians. A BBC article stated “Artists cannot truly operate without their fandoms. Fans can still congregate online while we wait for their return.” While everything was shut down artists had to change the way they communicated with their fans and find ways to gather in virtual spaces. Jeeni believes that even now when venues are open, artists and creatives will use online spaces more and more. Jeeni is a great platform for them to do this as it is more ethical than most of the larger corporations and Jeeni artists keep 100% of everything they earn. The next topic we wanted to highlight was brought to our attention from an NME article: “Fewer than 800 UK musicians make a living solely from online streaming,” and also “A particular finding points to artists making a “sustainable living” from streaming alone, revealing that approximately 720 British artists are able to. Those 720 musicians fall into the 0.4 per cent category of those who are achieving more than one million UK streams.” It is clear it is already challenging for independent artists to make decent earnings from streaming but "Spotify’s New Marquee Promotion Feature Is Forcing Artists to Pay to Reach Fans They Already Have — As Much as $0.50 Per Click” says Digital Music News. The big players in streaming are continuing to rip off artists and their fans alike. The article goes on to state that “it would take artists anywhere from 100 to 167 streams (on Spotify) to break even on just one sponsored click. That means each person who clicks on a sponsored Marquee campaign would have to listen to a new album roughly 12 times for the artist to break even on that fan’s interest." Thirdly, Twitch and the music industry clashed back in 2020 over licensing streamed music. Now a deal has been struck, but streamers are unhappy. Many streamers on the platform were hoping for a change but the deal remained virtually the same. "Only listen to safe music." All Jeeni royalty-free songs on the site are safe to use while streaming. Fourthly, the New York Digital News site published a story surrounding TikTok and the platform’s new massive impact on music. Stating “TikTok is evolving into a very different kind of music streaming giant. TikTok creators who aren’t musical creators themselves are using music. Musicians get paid off the back of that, and it can become a healthy revenue stream. It helps break songs and artists, consumption goes up on the other platforms, more tickets are sold, a bigger live-streaming event can happen etc.” Lastly, only just falling into the monthly round-up we wanted to highlight the release of the latest James Bond film No Time To Die. “One of the most famous pieces of film music of all time, this has featured in every single Bond film in some form or another since it played over the opening credits of Dr No back in 1962 is the John Barry & Orchestra, Monty Norman – James Bond Theme (1962)” Each film has a title song dedicated to it including the new track by Billie Eilish- No Time To Die. But the all-time Jeeni favourite has to be Paul McCartney's "Live And Let Die", which was written on the Wings Bus that Jeeni helped to rescue, and which goes back on the road next year. Watch this space for exclusive info on that one!

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