We All Make Music: David Bell of the Block Scholars
Longtime uPlaya users, the Block Scholars, reflect on the past 11 months they have spent using the uPlaya music analysis and promotion service in a recent feature on We All Make Music. The popular music site, which is "Helping Musicians Thrive in a Post-Label World", recently reviewed the uPlaya service with CEO, David Meredith, and is now following up by talking with artists using it.
uPlaya Artists, The Block Scholars
The following is an excerpt from the feature:
Did you have specific goals when you put your music onto uPlaya? Did you think, “I wanna see how these Block Scholars songs stack up against other hip-hop songs,” or “What’s their hit potential?” You’ve mentioned that you kind of used it to tweak your songs in certain ways. Was that something that you anticipated doing from the start or did that kind of develop along the way?
It kind of developed along the way. At first I was like, “Let me see if what they are saying is true.” We have gotten accolades for our music even before I went to uPlaya. We were on many web sites; a Garage Band song of the day, one web site gave us hip-hop song of the year. So I went and took those songs and said, “These places already think the songs are good, let’s see how uPlaya judges them.” And the songs that got the awards got platinums and golds, so it kind of validates [the initial praise]. And then what I did was start experimenting with music, putting in demos that we just finished. [If they] didn’t get a good score, turn around, tweak it, add some more instruments, make the music clearer, a better bitrate, and put it through again, and up went the scores. Just little things like that make a lot of difference.
You know, I’ve put some 150-200 songs through, so I’ve invested a lot of money and a lot of music into uPlaya and you have to if you really want to see what it’s gonna do. You’re gonna have to go yourself and try it out. And I went and used the widgets and got great response on the widgets. They have a press kit. You gotta go use the press kit. I have a press kit with another site, you know, and I sit there and compare the press kits and see how many hits I get off of it. Are people looking at uPlaya’s kit as well as this other kit? Am I getting any feedback from anybody because of uPlaya, am I getting any feedback because of the other one? I do compare, on a daily basis, uPlaya to the other places that I’m at, and they’ve been great. It’s gotten us a lot of exposure as independent artists.