I had the opportunity to travel west and visit Jordi, Scarlett and the guys as they talk about writing the song and how Western Australia manages to keep producing an incredibly talented range of musicians and artists.

Below is our chat with them plus a bloopers reel… yeah, they like to giggle.

Check out their new music video for ‘Awkward’ which is a really great song. Get out and support these guys!

Here are the official posters that I photographed and designed for the film.

You can keep up to date with ‘Cockatoo’ as it does it festival rounds here on the Facebook page and on our website Ninja Milk

Not sure if these saw the light of day but here are some stills I took of Sydney based musician ‘Leroy Lee’ in a guitar factory in Sydney.

KNOW & GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

I have been following YouTube singer/songwriter Julia Nunes for a couple of years now and she stands out as someone who knows how to build an audience organically by posting video content of her performing songs (originals & covers) in creative ways from her bedroom.

Her YouTube account titled jaaaaaaa has since Mar, 2006 accumulated over 200,000 channel subscribers and her video views total 46 million hits. These kind of numbers would even make music artists/bands with large PR power very jealous.

CROWD FUNDING: Let the people decide a projects’ merit.

During the years that Julia has been building and growing her online brand a website called Kickstarter was establishing itself as one of the top crowd-funding platforms for creative projects. Using Kickstarter anyone can start a funding campaign to ask for contributions from people around the world who are interesting in pitching in for a project to help make it happen. The creator selects a fundraising goal amount and if  that total is raised the money goes to the creator. If the amount isn’t raised money goes back to the user who pledged.

JULIA NUNES + KICKSTARTER

Julia has released some albums and tracks in the past which you can buy from online stores as well as other merchandise. As she is an independent artist I would imagine the prior recordings would have been self-funded with tight budgets. But this is about to change.

Julia started a Kickstarter campaign titled “Julia Nunes Would Be Nothing Without Me” with a conservative goal of $15,000. It can be very intimidating to start a campaign knowing that your audience will make or break the funding process and are ultimately judging it’s merit. Remember if Julia doesn’t raise $15,000 in pledges there are no funds.

Here is her kooky video introducing the campaign:

Well, within 24-hours after launching the campaign her online community had pledged $19,000 to fund the creation of her album. Less than a week later the total was $42,000 and growing by the hour.

As I write this blog there are 11-hours to go before the month-long campaign draws to an end. Julia Nunes has raised over $72,000 from 1,527 online donating fans.

As a result of the overwhelming show of support and demand for Julia’s album to be recorded not only can she pay all the musicians and cover all the production costs but will now invest in the promotion and PR of the album. The media is also starting to take note and Julia has appears on CNN within the last 24-hours.

FIVE THINGS JULIA NUNES DID RIGHT

1) PRODUCT. She knew her “product.” Julia gave clear indications of what she was selling and what the community would receive as a result. In this case an album and if donations allowed a campaign to market the album release.

2) INCENTIVES. She was clear in presenting incentives for people who donated. A pledge of $10 gets you a download copy of the album. A pledge of $30 delivers a signed hard-copy of the album plus the download pre-release version. These are great value and line up with real world product values. It might seem obvious but some crowd-funding projects I have seen have not matched the incentives with monetary value.

3) MONEY CAN’T BUY. A donation of 2,500 will deliver Julia Nunes to your living room for a personal concert plus a stack of other swag. So far there have been 3-users donating this money-can’t-buy experience.

4) CREDIT THE COMMUNITY. The title of the campaign, “Julia Nunes Would Be Nothing Without Me.” Such a smart way of offering the credit for the project back to the people who now have a sense of ownership of the album’s creation.

5) REMAIN SOCIAL. Julia also used her Social Media platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to spread news of the project but also consistently showing her gratitude to the people who were making this possible and validating her as a musician.

Screenshot from Kickstarter

Let me know your thoughts on anything Social Media, Crowd funding, YouTube related and head over to my company website Ninja Milk – Creative. Social. Content to find out why I am so passionate about such topics.

UPDATE: The final total raised for the project was $77,888.00 which is an amazing result.

Cheers,

Bradley

(Director / Digital Producer)
Ninja Milk – Creative. Social. Content

Ninja Milk is a content creation and social media company. We create web content for brands and set-up, monitor and maintain social media sites like Facebook, Twitter & YouTube.

My business partner and I are really excited about Ninja Milk as we feel that our approach to social media and the distribution of branded content into the online communities is something that is quite unique to our company at the moment.

If you are keen to know more about Ninja Milk and the way we work just contact me and we can chat further.

Here is our website which was designed and created on a WordPress MU backend by Brown Box (Sydney) in 2010. We love our site!

On the eve of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, I thought I would re-upload the video in full-quality, something that wasn’t possible on YouTube four years ago.

Looking foward to watching a lot of games this World Cup and I will post anything worthwhile here so keep checking back here.I am supporting Australia of course and anyone playing Italy and France.

Here are the old ones which isn’t bad for 6 years of wear.

I have made a New Years resolution for 2010 to run at least 2km everyday for a year. One month down and going strong. My usual week would involve a weekend run of 8-16km, a few 4-5kms during the week and the rest a 2km speed run. I am also aiming for a Half-Marathon (21km) hopefully once a month.

My first half-marathon was my birthday 23rd January which took 3-hours exactly. Now to get faster and stronger.

I am happy to say that his debut album is pressed and official released on December 4th, 2009. I have a few advanced copies of the paper sleeve CD which I am honored to say includes a photo (inside the foldout sleeve) that I took during a photo shoot Leroy Lee a few months back.

Leroy Lee's debut album - Artwork by Greedy Hen

The CD artwork itself is designed by Greedy Hen who have designed all of Leroy Lee‘s releases to date and seems to compliment the feel of the music so well.

Leroy Lee's debut album - Photo by Bradley J. Conomy

The album is available in music retailers from the 4th but it already on iTunes for digital purchase. Buy it on iTunes

You can check out more of Leroy Lee @ MySpace which also features the music video for Mountain Song which I directed and camera operated.

Review Links:

http://zisuyan.blogbus.com/logs/52094917.html

Akil’s beats and lyrics were amazing. Hope the photos portray the energy that was in the room. Let me know what you think.

Akil the MC - Put your hands up

Akil the MC - Photo: Bradley J. Conomy

Akil the MC

Open mic

Filming Akil

Morganics

Journey (Free Form) performing 'We Get Down'

Akil & Morganics

Open mic

Please give me a credit if you would like to post these. Credit: www.bradleyjconomy.com

You can see some of my photographs of Free Form’s set here on Facebook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Pilkington