Zeeteah Massiah - ‘Wat A Ting’, Single Review.

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Zeeteah Massiah - ‘Wat A Ting’, Single Review.

Zeeteah Massiah’s 'Wat A Ting’ is a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek poke at misinformation and its relentless spreading, all the while being a dancehall banger in its own right.

As an ambassador of Jeeni, Zeeteah Massiah is certainly something of a Jeeni royal. She has been a big part of the origins and early stages of Jeeni and her support is invaluable. Zeeteah Massiah is a Number One Billboard Dance Chart star who specialises in Reggae, Jazz and house music and has worked with the likes of Tom Jones, Sting and Robbie Williams. Now, she makes incredible music with her husband, Paul.

The clarity of the production in ‘Wat A Ting’ is perfect. The off-beat pulse is so neat and perfectly edited and that’s with so much else going on; broken glass, rapid reggae drumrolls and several layers of backing vocals all fly over each other but this track never sounds messy or unintentional. The attention to detail in the mix for this single is exhaustive and thorough. That approach to production results in all sonic layers staying in their corner, but interacting with each other in total coherence and clarity.

Everything in ‘Wat A Ting’ is tight, staccato and playful in its nature. It sounds like Zeeteah and her husband, Paul had so much fun with every layer of this track. As a counter-point to the short, abrupt timbre of the rest of this song, the pre-chorus is cleverly, much smoother with the addition of sweeping backing vocals and strummed guitar parts. This soft, calmer section is a great spot for the deceptively, reassuring lyrics “No need to fear now, what’s going on here now.” before the accepting chorus, “We've all gone crazy.”

Zeeteah’s voice is pitch perfect and so adaptable; her singing is soft and caring for the pre-choruses but aptly manic and wild for the ‘Wat a ting, wat a ting!” choruses. The care and precision she carries in her voice could only be that of a seasoned professional vocalist.

Although the track is undeniably fun, it addresses an incredibly important issue, “They told me there was COVID in the 5G, they told me the earth was flat.” Underneath the lively, mischievous tone of the track, 'Wat A Ting’ is an exasperated resignation to the persistent spread and sharing of false information as a result of fear and ignorance, “It’s all very clear now, we’ve all gone crazy.”

Check out this fun and important track here: https://jeeni.com/wat-a-ting-zeeteah-massiah/

And check out Zeeteah’s Jeeni showcase here: https://jeeni.com/showcase/zeeteah-massiah/

Album review

How can Jeeni support artists like Zeeteah Massiah?

JEENI is a multi-channel platform for original entertainment on demand. We’re a direct service between creatives and the global audience.

• We give creatives, independent artists and performers a showcase for their talent and services. And they keep 100% of everything they make.
• We empower our audience and reward them every step of the way.
• We promise to treat our members ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect.
• Access to artist liaison and a supportive marketing team.

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10
Jun

26,426 views of Jeeni Blogs since we launched Crowdcube

With 5 days to go on Crowdcube we are reflecting on what we could have done better and how we could have improved our campaign, as well as on our successes. Even though we "bust a gut" working 7 days a week for 5 months, we always want to reflect and improve where we can. Both Mel and I are academic in terms of looking at all the options and possibilities and like to analyse our work, and most days we take time to look at how things could be improved. We are not critical of each other, just honest and reflective in an open and supportive way. Jeeni, the social music platform that brings artists closer to their fans and shares revenue ethically, has successfully raised over £340K on Crowdcube across three rounds. If you want to see our pitch click HERE. As part of the campaign we launched Jeeni.blog which has been a huge success and we have had over 26,426 active views, and my LinkedIn has over 12,000 followers. LinkedIn has become my preferred social media and we have genuinely started moving away from Twitter and Instagram. I find it much more professional, interesting and informative. So as part of our learning we are going to learn how LinkedIn can best support Jeeni going forward. Our Facebook Group Independent Musicians and Performers has also been a huge success with over 2,500 new and active members with organic growth, and over 1,300 posts, comments and reactions with no advertising spend, engaging with over 30,000 unsigned artists with a zero cost of acquisition. Click HERE to visit or return to jeeni.com

04
Jun

A $0.003 reward?! We’re Twitching at the thought!

Twitch has always been popular amongst the gaming community. It was created initially in 2011 as a platform for gamers to use in order to live stream as well as broadcast live Esports events and competitions and has since retained on average 15million daily users. With so much more of our time spent online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Twitch has expanded in regard to what they broadcast and live stream: talk shows are growing in popularity as well as live streamed music to name but a couple. As the date for the resumption of normality approaches and with it the reopening of concert halls and live shows, one can speculate as to what will happen to those artists that have decided to make use of these live streaming platforms as a source of income. Twitch users reportedly spend three times as much time on the platform as on Sportify and YouTube so the potential for it to be a very lucrative platform for music makers and artists is what has been looked into by Will Page, an economist who runs Tarzan Economics. He worked alongside various teams in order to understand how live streaming and live music may co-exist in the future. “Live streaming won’t go away when live music returns.” -Will Page In 2002, one of the first music streaming services Rhapsody, offered a $9.99 monthly price which is the same as what we see today for similar music streaming services. What is provided is also pretty much the same as what was offered in 2002; fans remain largely disconnected from their favourite artists, they are unable to offer direct compensation to creators, and ‘cross-usage’ occurs frequently as a listener is often subscribed to multiple platforms. “None of the on-demand streaming services that have since sprung up enable immediate engagement, this is a relic of the music industry of old.” -Will Page User engagement is something that both Twitch and Jeeni offer, and not only does it allow the fans to be more involved with the artists they love, but it allows the artists to be fairly compensated, a huge issue which is now being petitioned against by the Broken Record Campaign. See our last blog post for more information and ways that you can support the campaign. According to Will Page, the typical music streaming model has approached the way in which artist are compensated in one way: “the platform aggregates all the streaming data and revenues from a specific market and product over a specific time period, divides an artist’s share by that sum, and allocates revenues proportionately. Get 1% of all the streams, and you’ll get 1% of all the money. This has spurred much debate within the industry, as heavy streamers are effectively subsidised by light streamers, or as Quartz controversially put it: Your Spotify and Apple Music subscriptions pay artists you never listen to.” In essence, the modelling simply just isn’t fair, and neither rewards the artists or their fans for supporting them. The way in which Twitch brings in money, however, varies across three methods similar to Jeeni: Creator Channel Subscriptions, Bits allow users to support creators directly on the service, and advertising. Will Page made a comparison between creator earnings on Twitch, which average at $0.15 per-hour-per-user, with that of global streaming services at which the rate per-stream is set at roughly $0.003. By taking the $0.003 per stream and multiplying by 17 (assuming a song lasts 3 minutes this equates to an hour of listening time), then applying an average 20% royalty rate, this results in a creator’s “revenue-per-hour listened” at just $0.01. My jaw dropped, did yours? Twitch has proved it can monetise over 10 times better than music streaming, however this only applies to creators’ most loyal fans that tune in on a regular basis. "If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year." -Kevin Kelly, The Technium, 2008 Do you want to spend hours watching your favourite gamer and at the same time, fairly compensate and reward them for their time and effort? Well of course. What Twitch does for gamers, we want to do for music makers and artists here at Jeeni. Look out Twitch, we’ll meet you at the finish line.

04
Jun

10 Reasons why the world needs Jeeni

My name is Mel Croucher. I'm a record producer and computer nerd. Over the years I've worked with a whole bunch of superstars like Prince, Frank Zappa and Eminem. In other words, I've been around successful musicians all my working life. A few years back I was hearing from more and more artists how unhappy they were with the big streaming services. So I polled 4,200 of them about their Top-Ten Problems with Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Deezer, and the rest. The poll result was a shocker, and I asked a bunch of the best brains in the music business to help me create an ethical alternative. It's taken us two years, and we call our alternative JEENI. Here's what the artists we polled told us, and here's our Jeeni solution to their problems. 1 - Money. Artists get paid a pittance. Platforms like YouTube pay $0.00069 per view, so even 10,000 views earns us less than the cost of a pizza per month.Jeeni solution. OK, we get it. You do all the hard work, so you deserve all the rewards. How about a Jeeni deal where you to keep 100% of all music sales, ticketing, and merchandise sold through our platform. 2 - Recognition. We try really hard, but streaming platforms just don't get us more fans or recognition.Jeeni solution. Right. Let's make Jeeni an artist development platform. Our founder invented viral marketing in 1994. Then he achieved the world's first million-user viral campaign. Now he's designed all the tools you need to grow your fanbase and get recognition: all part of the Jeeni service. 3 - Communication. We don't know the identity of who's streaming our stuff, so we can't get in direct contact with anyone who wants to know more about us.Jeeni solution. OK. Here's the deal. With Jeeni you get a built-in fan database to contact everyone who votes for you or likes your work, and you communicate direct with them as often as you like. Safely, legally and all opt-in. 4 - B*llsh*t. The big streaming platforms are full of it. We hate the adverts, we hate the artificial likes, we hate the paid-for recommendations, we hate the hype.Jeeni solution. The answer to this is an ethical alternative. We guarantee Jeeni will stay advert-free. We pledge our charts are the result of democratic votes by real people. And we promise that all Jeeni content comes from genuine unpaid sources. Oh yeah, we'll also pay our taxes in full, because we believe we should make a positive contribution to the society we live in. 5 - Rip Offs. We just can't break through, and even when we think we're making progress as artists we get ripped off.Jeeni solution. Yep. The entertainment business has always been full of shysters. Let's be honest here, the people behind Jeeni have all made it to the top somehow, and between us we've made every mistake in the book. Our mission is to help you achieve success and avoid the rip-offs. That's why our Jeeni Mentors, Ambassadors and Masterclasses have joined forces to do exactly that. 6 - Choice. The big streaming services all offer similar content, dominated by the same big star names.Jeeni solution. Agreed, so let's ignore the content everyone else uses and leave our competitors to fight it out! Jeeni is designed for undiscovered artists to break through, based on talent alone, not ad-spend. 7 - Channels. My work doesn't fit into mainstream channels. For example, what about channels for spoken-word?Jeeni solution. No problem. Jeeni already has dedicated spoken-word channels for poetry, comedy, and voice actors, plus channels for entertainments ranging from dance to videogame soundtracks. And if we don't already have a channel that suits your need ... we'll sit down and create it! 8 - Visibility. People either don't know about our work, or can't find it even if they do.Jeeni solution. We've designed the smartest user interface we can. On Jeeni, you can search by name, type of channel, instrumentation, latest uploads, popularity, even by influences and heroes. But above all, our artists have complete control over publicising their own announcements to their specific Jeeni audience. 9 - Fakes. What's the difference between the Jeeni Awards and the fake results dominated by celebrity voting?Jeeni solution. Simple. Jeeni doesn't have celebrity voting. Our Awards will always be based on one member - one vote. No ifs, no buts. 10 - Live performance. I'd like to stream an event, and charge people to watch it. Can Jeeni do that?Jeeni solution. Um, not yet, but we're working on it! Come on now, we're not perfect, so we need your help. Jeeni has returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds for helping new talent. Jeeni founding director Mel Croucher says, “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. Jeeni raised £100K in 6 days and we’re working hard to get more investors on board. 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.

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