If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you must have been living under a rock… In addition to being all over Twitter and Facebook, we here at The Orchard have had a great many newsworthy things going on, and we just can’t keep quiet about it! It’s one thing to announce things like how The Orchard turns 15 this year, how we have some incredible new signings and continue to celebrate our devoted clients and how our EU team is undergoing expansion and restructuring, but those are just words! Where’s the face time you ask?
Well for starters, we just wrapped up our time at MIDEM this year. Our VP of Product Marketing, Jaclyn Ranere, hosted an informative session in the Innovation Lab to spread the good word about The Orchard. Also, not to be overshadowed, was the Orchard Penthouse Party that actually made headlines - yep, that’s right, start takin’ notes.
While some of our team was battling the uncharacteristically bad weather in Cannes, our SVP of Marketing, Pete McCarthy shipped off to sunny Cali to attend D: Dive into Media. He joined in on the timely conversation about what changes in media we can expect, what changes we’ve seen and what that means for The Orchard and the industry as a whole.
If you call New York home, you hopefully made it to our NYC Music/Tech Meet-Up. If you missed it, we forgive you and fear not! We plan to host more of these meet-ups as it was a great way for the NYC music and tech community to gather for some hang time that’s NOT in a meeting room.
As we continue on with our Tour de Orchardites, our CTO Josh Builder will be co-hosting a panel at San Francisco Music Startup Academy hosted by Digitalmusic.org. The panel, Getting Under The Hood: Music Operations For CTOs and Developers, will take place on February 14th, and Josh and his co-panelists will discuss action items from a technical standpoint for budding music companies. Can’t wait? Here’s a sneak peek.
Finally, lest we forget South by Southwest in Austin, Texas this March. We will be dusting off our chaps and boots and riding our purebreds down to the Lone Star State (we wish… great visual though, right?). The Orchard CEO, Brad Navin, will be moderating a panel called Navigating the Middle that will dive into the discussion of using (or not using) a so-called “middle-man” to market your music.
We’re moving fast, so to keep up: watch The Daily Rind for all things Orchard, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and if you’re attending one of the events mentioned above, please feel free to reach out at mbrown@theorchard.com.
While we all settle back down after our New Year’s Eve celebrations and look forward to 2012, let us not forget to look back fondly on the year we put to rest at midnight on Saturday.
For the Orchard, it was another record year. We launched and improved more client tools, including the launch of Artist Builder, The Orchard Marketplace and improvements to our Analytics tool. Along with so many excellent Orchard campaigns and releases in 2011, Orchard artists blew up the Billboard Heatseakers charts, including Kina Grannis, Phantogram, Rhett Miller, Ray Davies and The Raveonettes. As if that’s not enough, we launched The Orchard Sports, which took our digital distribution services to a whole other level.
To put a cap on the year, The Orchard’s New York office hosted 19 of our international staff from around the world for a few days of meetings and work sessions capped by The Orchard Holiday Party. Having our global staff physically in the office with us is an ideal way to round out our year full of Skype and conference calls, emails and other means of slightly less formal communication. This face time with our international staff reminds us of the scale of our operations and how The Orchard is killing it in all corners of the globe.
We’ve already wished you a Happy Holiday with The Orchard’s Best of 2011 Playlist but here it is below in case you missed it – it’s also on Spotify and Rdio!
So welcome back to work everyone, well done 2011 and happy 2012.
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Today, you fall into one of two categories. Either you went to The Orchard Showcase during CMJ last week or you did not. I’ll first address those of you who did come…
Dear friends, colleagues, clients, artists and random music lovers off the streets, thank you! Thank you for making our CMJ Showcase with Fanbridge, VitaminWater and Moontoast such a hit. What was the best part? Having Scoundrels make the trek from the UK to impress all of our CMJers or Yellow Ostrich charming the pants off of everyone? Perhaps it was Ted Leo’s nostalgic solo set that made us all thank God that he is still as awesome as he’s ever been? O-kay if none of those, then it was surely Royce da 5’9’’ leaving everyone a little shocked but somehow completely and utterly satisfied. In true Orchard style, we pulled off a great event without a hitch.
Now for those of you who didn’t make it.
If the above Thank You plea didn’t make you a little jealous, then these pictures here and here from The Self Portrait Project will indeed. You missed a night of bowling, music, free beer, a free iPad thanks to Moontoast, a great venue (shout out to Brooklyn Bowl!) and most importantly, great company. Please do yourself a favor and come on out to our next event.
When is that you ask? Come on down for some Halloween festivities at Idle Hands Bar on Avenue B between 2nd and 3rd this Monday from 7-10PM. The Orchard will be guest bartending and ALL tips go to World Savvy, who work to educate and engage youth around the world in community and world affairs. Hope you can join us to celebrate the weirdest holiday of the year and help the youth of the world while you do it!
Nashvegas, eh? I have to say, there is a blatant inaccuracy about this nickname and I can’t help but demand all of Nashville to renounce this moniker.
Nashville has the charming country folk mixed in with the charming not-so-country folk and somehow they all live together harmoniously in a big-but-small-enough-to-run-into-people-you-know size town. Just because they can party like its 1999 and drink any New Yorker under the table, I’m having a hard time finding the similarities between the city of sin and that sweet sweet capitol of Tennessee.
Now that this is off my chest, we can talk about Soundland. Next Big Nashville underwent some restructuring to create Soundland 2011 which made for some new programming (and a tiny bit of confusion), but I think the identity crisis may end up being a good thing for these folks. None of us can say we have our finger on the Nashville pulse like they do so I’d go so far as to say it’s an essential event for those wanting to dive deep into this thriving (not just country) slice of the industry. This is not to ignore the non-Nashville talent/participants, but I’m focusing on what I felt to be the most unique thing about the event, given the numerous conferences held throughout the rest of the year.
Our Marketplace launch party at Virago Club was a huge success (such a success we exceeded our bar tab 20 minutes into the event, nice) and the folks at SunTrust Bank and Loeb & Loeb were fantastic co-hosts. We’re looking forward to maintaining the relationships that came from our latest visit to Nashville and are excited to stay involved in the scene of the south.
