One That Will Inspire You Forever: Keith Cullen and His Story

10-Jul-2020 By Leave a Comment

(Post by Ciara Sheahan) We’re looking for inspiration around us, aren’t we? Here’s a little something from us to inspire you forever, and more so inspire all independent musicians to truly chase their dreams, they do come true. Don’t believe us? Read on.

Keith Cullen is a singer-songwriter from Dublin who we had the privilege to host at youbloomLA a few years ago. Keith is the guy who gave it all up to follow his dream. He ran a very successful marketing company with his sister Jennifer in Dublin. They started with nothing and built their business into a profitable operation, bringing them both money, success, and a good lifestyle. So, you’d think all this would make you happy, right ? Well, actually it didn’t.

Keith-Cullen

Keith had a niggle. And it wouldn’t go away. A musical niggle, a yearning to write and perform. That voice in the back of his head that wouldn’t shut up.

A few years previously Keith Cullen had been offered a place in the London School of Music but get this — he didn’t believe in himself enough to pursue the opportunity. He chose the business option instead. In 2010 he decided to let the voice in his head take over. He quit the marketing business to focus on what he really wanted to do. “No regrets, ” he says, “I never wanted to look back on my life and have regrets”.

He started writing again, got a few professional opinions, worked on his voice, wangled a few introductions in the right places, worked the local scene as much as he could. Now as everyone knows, behind every good man is an even greater woman. Keith was blessed in this case as Jennifer took a leap of faith with him. She studied professional management in Dublin and completed her music management studies in London. All whilst juggling the combination of managing Keith, running their Believe Management Company, and rearing her son.

As a result of all their efforts and focus , Keith got a bit of a break. He landed the support slot for Shanyne Ward for three nights at the prestigious luxury venue, The Olympia Theatre in Dublin.

This was his first taste of it. He got involved with festival promoters and played relentlessly at numerous festivals around Ireland. During this stint he worked line ups with acts like Bressie, Keywest, Jack L, Jedward and Ryan O’ Shaughnessy. He showcased his own new material and engaged with his audience. Keith and Jennifer were clever here, because they quickly realised the value of social media. They used the festival platform to build Keith’s substantial social media presence. He has 3,181 friends on Facebook and a Twitter following of over 35,000. That’s a lot of fans. Fans = customers = sales = success = sustainable dream of being a performer.

In the last few years Keith Cullen has been signed by Notting Hill Music in London, he has acquired an agent in the US. He has invested significantly in his videos and self-released singles over that time. He has proven his weight and worth to any prospective labels. He is working his dream-like he worked his business and building from the ground up.

He supported Hozier at The Academy in Dublin, he has several industry legends to visit when he gets to LA. He was part of the Guinness Amplify program and just recently performed for the BBC. He has no illusions about realizing his dreams. He took a big risk. It will pay off, his talent will endure and everyone will ask about his “overnight success”. It’s truly something to be inspired forever. Check him out on www.kcmusic.ie

About the Author
Ciara Sheahan is a self confessed indie rock n’roller. Live music addict, writer, blogger, festival veteran. Native to Dublin, my degree in Journalism is from The University of Sheffield. With a proven track record in business and a creative side that refuses to recede I’m firmly focused on my future in the music/creative industry.

Maintaining some control of your own booking and touring can be made easy for those who choose to hire a manager and those who fly solo through youbloomConnect and/ or sign up here: https://www.youbloom.com/artist-apply/ where you can get partnered to perform with other local artists, build a steady fan-base, and even get your band on the road.

2025 Music Marketing Guide for Indie Artists: From Branding to Bookings

15-Jun-2020 By Leave a Comment

(Post Via SARA HARRISON) You may come up with the best marketing strategy that is fit for your band, but the most important thing is to come up with a brand and something you can do consistently. All efforts you’ve done for your marketing campaign will fail if you don’t follow through with your plans. If you’re in a band and you want to be popular in the music scene, you have to face countless others who want to be just as famous as their stars. Your best bet is to have a good marketing strategy.

Awareness: Who Is Aware of Your Brand Of Music ?

Music isn’t your only tool to be known by your fans. You can also invite people to attend your gigs and review you as a band, so they can spread the word.You can reach out to local bloggers and influencers with free tickets to your gig, or a free EP to give access to your music. Snapchat becoming a widely used service even by popular news sites, which means a lot of users are going to look for you here as well if they are your fans. Facebook is your friend, but you shouldn’t stick to groups and pages. You can use the power of live streaming, sharing commentary and creating the atmosphere of being engaging by always staying up to date with Facebook’s latest trends and using them to engage your fans.

Responsiveness: Are You Communicating With Fans?

Of course, you can’t exactly form a fan base if you’re not appealing to your prospective fans. It’s not always about your music, but how you convey it. You should be a group that people want to follow and check out. You should convey a personality of sorts when you interact with your fans, even in social media. Artists and bands may want to consider how large is their fan base first before releasing their tracks. If you want to make a partnership with labels, your social media numbers maybe your version of credibility for partners and sponsors. One way to do this is by making design contests. You can challenge artists to create
posters or shirt designs for your brand, and print the winner. If you’re reaching out to potential sponsors to support your shows or merchandise, preparing a professional sponsorship letter sample in advance can greatly improve your chances of getting funding or partnerships.

Exposure: Where Do You Bring Your Music?

So you have a band, and you want to be known. You have tracks ready, and you may have been doing gigs of your own as well. However, this shouldn’t count as your overall exposure, as you may need to do something more to fully expose your fans to your music. For instance, you can do unique song covers such as acoustic versions of your favorite non-acoustic songs, or slow versions of fast music. Spotify has grown to be the best alternative option to the radio. It’s one of the only bonafide music platforms to share your playlists to your fans inside and outside Spotify. You can team up with popular podcasters to have your music featured in their episodes, or you and your band can make a podcast as well. This is a handy way to have something to engage your audiences with that is not always your music. Additionally, aiming to play even a small set at one of the biggest music festivals in America can supercharge your visibility. Being listed on major festival lineups not only attracts new fans, but also signals credibility to promoters, sponsors, and the media.

Online Is Not Always the Best

This may seem counterintuitive, but this is something everyone should always remember, your offline presence should be just as strong as your online presence. Help your fans know that you are available in the real world to interact with. You should try establishing a home base where you’re always expected to appear, so fans can go and see you. Discmaker suggests you can go to local fests, events, venues, and bars to do gigs so people can discover your music. This is of course in venues outside your “home base.” Even niche festivals like Seabreeze Jazz Festival 2025 can be a great place to meet a highly engaged audience—especially if your sound aligns with their genre. Don’t overlook these genre-specific opportunities that help you stand out from generic lineups.

You can also try out geo-targeting your audience in emails, newsletters, and Facebook events. This means, with the right guidance, you can attract and focus on potential fans in areas closer to the place you will have events in. If you’re selling tickets for local gigs or small tours, be sure to explore youbloom, one of the cheapest ways to sell tickets online, so you don’t lose profits to high platform fees while keeping access easy for your fans.

If you’re looking for a simpler way to join these networks, check out youbloom Connect and/ or sign up here: https://www.youbloom.com/artist-apply/ where you can get partnered to perform with other local artists, build a steady fan-base, and even get your band on the road.

The AuthorSARA HARRISON
Sara is a music enthusiast who loves to play guitar and the piano. She has alarge selection of music CDs with Rock and Blues being her favourite. In her spare time, she’s studying to be a music teacher and enjoys visiting music festivals. She currently writes for Undercover.net.au and enjoys life.

Writing Song Lyrics Right

12-Jun-2020 By 1 Comment

As musical styles progress and change with the times, one thing is for certain, writing song lyrics continues to play a vital part in what sets artists from being good to be considered great. So for those of you currently in a creative drought, here is some advice from a few of the greats.

Jimi Hendrix on Artistic Liberties with the Facts

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

–Jimi Hendrix

Many artists pigeonhole themselves by believing that every word written must be 100% accurate to their lives and story they are telling. Of course, speaking from your own personal experiences is vital in creating meaningful music. But the point is to get your message across in the best way possible. Sometimes, this might involve a little science fiction.

Dolly Parton on Throwing Yourself into the Process

“It’s therapy. It’s fun. It’s creative. I love getting on a big writing binge and staying up a couple days working on song and knowing at the end of those two or three days that I’ve created something that was never in the world before.”

–Dolly Parton

If this is your passion, don’t be afraid to throw yourself into your work. The stories of artists writing a hit song in 5 minutes’ time, on a napkin, in an airport is incredible! But most great songs come from hard work, dedication, and focus from the artist. This mean sitting down and wrestling with a song until it feels right.

John Mayer on Speaking Your Own Truth

“I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I’m singing. It comes down to being believable.”

–John Mayer

Authenticity is key in songwriting and producing. This may seem strange since the first piece of advice was to stretch the truth in the songwriting process. Don’t be confused, there is a difference between writing a nonfiction story to produce a personal truth, and writing a meaningless song for the sake of staying on trend. Be true to your artistic endeavors and creative process because the song will thus come across genuine to the listeners.

Now go on and be inspired to create and then when it comes time to perform, remember to Sign up as an artist today and get the chance to connect with your fans and other artists to grow not only your fan base but your connections in the industry.

If you enjoy this blog about music and want to know more about youbloom Connect be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Why Live Music Changes Lives

01-Jun-2020 By 1 Comment

With live music moving towards ‘live streams’ in today’s challenging times, we are all eagerly waiting to go back to a life of waiting in long lines only to get up in front of the stage and flaunt our front row cred to the world. We believe that day is going to be soon, live music changes lives and is here to stay. Josey Dunbar takes us through the experience all over again well within the safe confines of your homes.

Now, picture this.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day in your local city – except you are unaware of this as you stand, shoulder to shoulder with strangers from all degrees of life. Packed like farm animals inside a dark auditorium awaiting the blinding of strobe lights and deafening of speakers with enough SPL per watt to uproot a forest. And yet, you leave this loud, crammed, seemingly undesirable experience as an inspired, satisfied and overall happier individual; and the question is: why? Why humans not only love, but crave the live music atmosphere, dates back to practically the dawn of mankind.

Even in prehistoric times, the art of live music was believed to play part in the lives of cavemen and women. Artifacts found revealing cave drawings of people dancing—and let’s be honest, who dances without music? Jump forward a few hundred-millennia to Ancient Greece where live performances of theater and music became not only a source of entrainment but also a means of projecting societal norms.

1700s: Opera emerges as a new type of live music performance; initiating a need for large showcase venues such as La Scala in Milan.

1850: Jenny Linda makes her debut in America, exceeding the crowd size brought out by any preceding artist.

1950s: Rock and Roll broke down the race barrier by showcasing black and white artists side-by-side on a shared stage.

Maybe it’s just in our nature or maybe there truly is something different, something unexplainable about live music. On that note (pun intended), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center conducted a study that analyzed the compared human reaction to live and recorded music. According to the data retrieved through this study, live music resulted in greater relief of stress among patients than recorded tracks. The setting, the physical vigor and connection between fan and artist has the power to pull audience members out of their busy lives for a moment, where nothing else matters but the art in front of them.

And that’s not even the best part. Concerts not only have illustrated a unique ability to reach people in a way no other means of art can, they are also -dare I say- saving the music industry. Mind you, this is a debated topic amongst music connoisseurs. Many argue, that as the profit from purchased music decreases with the incline in streaming, the touring and live music industry will pick-up the income slack.

Despite the outlandishness of this claim, it is valid considering the immense growth in live music profit over the past decade. Concerts and live tours, which were once mere means of promoting a new album, have evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry. Millennials have undeniably taken part in the live music fad; however according to Ticketmaster’s 2014 Live Attendee Study, their presence was solely thirty-five percent of overall attendees. Therefore insinuating that older generations too, have increased in concert attendance, and today take up sixty-five percent of the documented audience.

So picture this again.

It’s sixty degrees in Dublin, You’re in an outside venue in close quarters with the stranger on your left. You take a moment to appreciate that one festival brought all of these people together. The lights of the stage dim, and outsteps the artist you came to see. And thus, you leave this loud, crammed, seemingly undesirable experience as an inspired, satisfied and overall happier individual; and the answer is: music.

Music can brighten your day, try youbloomConnect. It doesn’t cost you anything to sign-up, but you’ll have the power to help create the show you want to see! So, sign-up as a fan today and become a part of this ecosystem.

If you enjoy this blog about music and want to know more about youbloomConnect be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Josey is music obsessed and a diehard Tom Petty fan. Josey currently lives outside of Los Angeles where she enjoys excessively sunny days, train adventures, and organic chai (yes, Josey is high-maintenance about her chai).

Music and Therapy: Listen To Music With Your Muscles

28-May-2020 By 1 Comment

(Post Via Josey Dunbar) Music philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, made this claim by insisting that humans ‘listen to music with their muscles’ through the use of facial expressions, keeping rhythm, and using their bodies to sing along. He projected music as something which requires the whole person rather than a mere half-listening ear.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why music is everywhere you go? Why these unavoidable tonal patterns are essential to human life and apparent in every aspect of society?
Maybe it’s a nice distraction from daily life, or maybe it’s much deeper than that.

Scientists have found that the act of simply experiencing music with others stimulates a ‘binding of the nervous system’ which can physically heal people. So hooray! Every musician can be a doctor! (Sort of).

Studies have shown that there are certain places in the brain most stimulated by the rhythmic sequences of sound. The Auditory Cortex (a fitting title) is primarily part of the temporal lobe on either side of the brain and the cells within are organized depending on their ability to receive high or low frequencies.
The Cerebellum is located at the back of the brain and is the body’s center for rhythm balance and coordination. The Center for Neuroskills attributes a musician’s ability to move their body to play their instrument as envisioned, is all thanks to a highly functioning Cerebellum.
And Finally, The Limbic System gives you the ability to react to music with your emotions, and feel the pleasure of a song you love. Disease researchers have also noted this as the place where humans feel the music rather than hear it.

While our brain is busy experiencing the influence of this amazing art, our bodies, minds and nervous systems are able to improve with the simple influence of these tone patterns.

One mind-blowing study conducted by a series of educators in music drafted the hypothesis that performing a musical instrument can protect the human brain from degenerative diseases. This was based on the scientific evidence that playing an instrument improves cognitive ability.
In order to prove this theory, music educators studied twins; this would eliminate favorable genetics as an indication for dementia prevention. The results of the study showed that musicians who play well into adulthood were thirty-six percent less likely to develop dementia.

Another fascinating discovery showed that playing an instrument leads to a higher IQ in early adulthood. In this study, researchers found that children under ten who had a sole year of instrumental music lessons had a significantly higher intelligence quotient than those who did not attempt to learn.

So now that you know how powerful music can be in the human brain, you may be wondering how to take it even further to develop some supernatural abilities (at least I am). Sadly, no discovered have been made on that —yet— however, there are several ways for us to best utilize the gift of music.

Music can be used to reduce stress and depression through improving mood, reducing stress, boosting immunity and aiding social bonding. It can also lead to enhances cognition. Through learning to play an instrument, even as a beginner, you will improve certain high brain functions which truly can enhance brain development.

Finally, don’t forget to use music as a memory booster. Science has found that music can be used on young brains to retain formation and enhance learning.

To take your insight of how music can brighten your day, please try youbloom connect. It doesn’t cost you anything to sign-up, but you’ll have the power to help create the show you want to see! So, sign-up as a fan today and become a part of this ecosystem.

If you enjoy this blog about music and want to know more about youbloomConnect be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.