Category: Public Relations

DJ Culture & Music, Establishments, events, Information, Music, promoters, Public Relations, theshineprjct, Toronto

The Mod Club’s Got A New Name & Look…Now Let’s Check Out The Vibe……..

theshineprjct
ALL AXIS FESTIVAL

After last year’s multiple closures in the hospitality and venue space industries things became a little quieter than usual around the 6ix. Usually, right after the holidays as is often what happens after Christmas and New Year’s. I know this as I’ve worked at many of those places over the years. As the sun set on many of the city’s favourite places-recent memories included: Raw Artists, his signature anonymous (House of Balloons) ‘Weekend’ presentations before he became the mega star he is today- Now that I think about it over the years, I’ve even been to a few NXNE festival presentations or showcases there too!

Just a few short days ago Work Late dropped the announcement that the former Mod Club is renamed Axis and also re-opening! It’s an exciting new chapter as this corridor of College St. has so many historic spots! This piece was supposed to go out a few days ago and as I was excited to see that an old venue is re-emerging anew- my hope for the future, as with many venues and venue owners in this city, is that they would take a more open-minded approach to hosting events and artists outside of the genre they were most comfortable with and used to.

What I intended to write in this piece is that I felt Hip Hop and Underground genres should be given more of a closer look- considering how many Canadian acts have gone out to do great things on global charts and streams (the lockdown shows this) We are all very aware at this point that Canadian artists and acts can and do pull a crowd at many venues around the world.

The Axis Club then goes on a few days later to release this line up for the All Axis Festival next month! A full 2 in 1.The two-day hybrid event will featuring both IRL performances as well as pre-recorded streams via Happin, a ticketing and live streaming platform with artists Savannah Ré, The Dirty Nil, DijahSB, Dylan Sinclair and more will perform at the newly renovated venue. And who is actually more?

On September 9th along with 2021 Juno winner Savannah Re there’s 3409,Dani Doucette,DJ Shub,Dylan Sinclair,No Tourists,TRP.P,Villabeatz. And the following night- GRAE,Korea Town Acid,Olivia Lunny,Orson Wilds,Peter Serrado*+more

Happin,a Toronto based tech and ticketing company is working in collaboration with Axis Club and the Unison Benevolent Fund (a music industry charity, providing emergency relief to the Canadian music community in times of hardship for about a decade now) to deliver an amazing streamed and IRL experience for this event. Things have changed and they are combining the two performance options together. I like this.

This is one of the great ways to restart this city’s nightlife in a completely new way! For more details contact (Stay Out Late) and check https://theaxisclub.com/ for details on their next club/concert nights. The future of nightlife in Toronto is looking up.
-theshineprjct

DJ Culture & Music, events, House Music, Movers & Shakers, promoters, Public Relations, Reflections, Social Media, theshineprjct, Toronto, Travel, women & entrepreneurship

theshineprjct (this blog) and Drumsradio UK presents-RALF GUM-Progressions – Part Deux with Sir LSG,Dave Rankin (Toronto)

theshineprjct

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I had to pull out an excerpt from our Skype interview almost 3 years ago! So I asked,’You mentioned at the beginning that you’ve been to Toronto once?’ Which he replied ‘Yes. In the Winter. It might have been 2009. Or 2010. I had a great, great night. It wasn’t at all what I expected. It was an amazing party! I can’t wait to come back’

Interviewed a few years ago at Toronto music lifestyle blog theshineprjct.com at the cusp of his last album release he talked about his first visit to Toronto and how unique he thought our scene was….he returns next month with theshineprjct.com and Drumsradio UK bringing you local and international selectas together…..can’t be missed!Please read it>>>>> https://bit.ly/2Tpd3fz

It’s 2019….and folks,HE’S BACK! I’d like to add that I’ve had a list of people I wanted to interview for years. He’s one of the DJ/Producers that I didn’t expect to return my requests and he did! It was a thought provoking interview and he’s made some banging hits! It’s Ralf GUM feat. Monique Bingham – Take Me To My Love (Ralf GUM Main Mix) – GOGO 053 – that lead me to speak to him.

With a solid Discography spanning more than a decade he gifts House with new,new album Progressions. He wraps instrumentals around vocals, he handcrafts each note to match the human voice (you definitely hear this with Monique Bingham’s tracks!)

theshinprjct.com & Drumsradio UK brings you RALF GUM Progressions with guests SIR LSG and Dave Rankin (Toronto)

German DJ/Producer and Label head Ralf Gum of GO GO Music re-visits #toronto with a long-planned intimate night of Deep and Soulful House. After 10 years he returns and brings forth his latest album Progressions (2019).

DJ/Producer SIR LSG joins Ralf (Luka ft. Jaidene Veda – Overstanding – Remixed with Anthony Nicholson – 2013) and (Gratitude feat. Melanie Scholtz – 2017) on first Traxsource charted album ‘Moving Circles’.

This year’s Canada Music Week selected country focus was South Africa- just because #CMW2019 is over doesn’t mean the electronic rhythms by way of SA aren’t…..theshineprjct.com held a ‘Tribal to AfroTech’ panel with guests Nick Holder and Ralf Gum this past May; to shed a little light on the Canadian and South African #djculture collaboration. Part Deux will be exciting!

These blog-to-live events are the first 2 of a series of #inspiredevents created by Owner/Creator Shanay Egwuenu with her PR/Digital Marketing agency urbcomgrp.com.

With a few years under her belt as a Digital and PR Marketer- I continue to mix my love of blogging,social media and organic promotion with Underground Music. I aim to deliver a fresh perspective on traditional media. Stay tuned for more!

Arrive early,
Come as you are,
We are Global,
It’s #aboutthemusic

drumheavy

Dancefloor Certified.

DJ Culture & Music, Establishments, events, Music, promoters, Public Relations, Reflections, Toronto

Canadian Music Week – CMW 2018 – The Information Age

theshineprjct

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A full week of non-stop music, panel discussions and mentorship all here in the T-Dot! This has to be one of the largest Music Week’s held in Canada this year! The official program guide was jam-packed with dozens of events hourly (Held at Toronto’s Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel and all over the city.)

Jointly presented by San Rafael and Amsterdam Brewery-I don’t even know WHERE to begin-this Canadian Music Week was PACKED with current information; From the Mentors’ Cafe to the panels, to industry organization exhibitors (SOCAN, MROC,FACTOR)

It was refreshing to see all the various organizations that work behind the scenes to assist artists in bringing forth new-ish ways of tackling the good ole industry…..

Their app was quite good! I loved the high touch accessibility of the app and it was much easier to navigate than look through the program and section it off with post-its like I did in the past…..or maybe I like apps. My favourite was the scheduling tool! You know where to be and at what time……

Blockchain

With the app I found Blockchain Music:Set It and Forget It,You’re Getting Paid it’s been a hot topic for a minute and this was a conversation circulation at ADE2017! Panelists (Dino Celotti,Jason Robert,Jesse Grushack,Ritesh Patel and Steven Masur) all part of the Music Production and Indie Label industries,collectively explained Blockchain and how it benefits the artists and the cascading industry as a whole. It’s great to see that many panels across the board had a heavy focus on the future of the industry with all the new talent and new technology. It’s interesting to see how they’ll connect and grow to make things a little more efficient (especially for the artist.)

My takeaway from this presentation: Blockchain could work if implemented correctly by making sure who gets paid at what point in the process of the file sharing process-and that this is a huge task and a bit of a lengthy process.

Lemme re-iterate here: The idea of being able to move assets between artists or from business to business in a seamless process, can make distribution simpler. With Blockchain promotion is still primary and editing and recordings can’t be remixed or altered. Blockchain is great for tracking transactions and artists still maintains rights to their music.

I ventured over to the SOCAN,!eDDS and travel booths-What’s travel got to do with it? Hundreds of people came through all week (May 7-13, 2018) especially very specific cities all over the U.S. and Canada. What makes this so important is that the cities closest to us all play a role in boosting the travel,tourism and music industries!

Part of the infrastructure built around the music industry depends not only on the talent, businesses and establishments but it may partially coincide on the neighbouring cities closest to us.

Discover America located in Mississauga,Ontario in conjunction with city states nearby- ‘promotes U.S. Travel and Tourism to Canadians in Canada. They offer ‘a variety of initiatives that connect travel and tourism stakeholders on both sides of the border’
Hotels, travel agents and Motor Coach Airlines are members of this organization.

I spoke to Dream America Canadian representative and Montreal native Pedro Barbosa who delved a little more into the topic of music festival tourism and the mandate in place for the cities involved in boosting their travel and tourism initiatives for any of the music festival seasons. Barbosa mentioned that ‘most of these places present today have routes covered by Air Canada or Porter Airlines-so there’s the routes that bring Canadians and Americans from all over the country, it gets the word out across the country and it’s kind of like a trade and exchange…..some of the places exhibiting here at #CMW2018 are even closer to Montreal than Toronto is’.

We talked about the benefits of visiting cities that have broad musical varieties. He’s big into Jazz and Metal but some city scenes he feels ‘are much smaller and there appears to be less of a fan base even when the scene is popular in that city.’

Barbosa did mention though that ‘when it comes to niche [music] markets, it’s the markets themselves that don’t always reach tourist outlets. Tourism boards tend to focus on specific genres and in order for Tourism Boards to present music venues,events and seasonal programs in their plans and more liaisons can be formed in the future to promote all music across the board.

All representatives for each city/state were highly informative and provided tons of info on the vibrant nightlife for each of these cities. Surprisingly,Portland has a very vibrant Underground House scene and Choose Chicago (sister city to Toronto,) representative spoke in detail about Chicago’s House and Underground scenes…..it’s looks like a coincidence that just a few days ago it was announced that there would be a lunch hour dance party at Daley Plaza! (Yaassss Chicago!)

Portland – The cities represented at this year’s CMW all had one thing in common: thousands of Canadians commute from all over Canada to all these places-each booth was set to highlight their musical influences,entertainment and nightlife. I spoke to Director of Content Strategy Karen Martwick about Portland’s offerings and was presented with information about Craft Beer, Independent Design both Interior and Graphic by Independent Artists. The other booths held tons of information for Canadians on: Myrtle Beach, NC (undergoing major reconstruction), Georgia (Explore Georgia-Macon/Decatur and other historic sites.) And finally Austin,Texas. I look forward to delving into their Underground scenes in the future!

!Earshot for Indie Artists !Earshot Digital Distribution (!eDDS) really stood out among all the booths because of its slant on music distribution.Partially funded by the NCRA (National Campus & Community Radio Association)  It’s an online platform that is designed to get music from the Canadian music industry to the Canadian College campus and community radio sector.) With so many platforms internationally available in 2018 it’s easy to overlook a distribution system like this. Canadian College and University radio is still a powerful method to chart Canadian music and with Canadian Pride at it’s all time high over the last few years, I think this is an essential resource alongside all other local and global platforms. Over 90 stations are on this roster in May 2018.

!Earshot
NCRA – Ottawa

Independent artists will be able to fully access this database this September. The cost is $7 per song and $50 per album! College Campus radio is still one of the most powerful outlets for pushing new and local music.  The list will grow by September especially after Canadian Music Week-check out the details here: I highly recommend any new or existing artists getting their feet wet and/or would like to do a little more national radio promo…..Tap into this resource as a starter or accompanying promotional tool.This is exciting!

Late Night Delights

What I missed: the Drake Underground with Amber Mark (her vocals possess Rihanna’s abruptness and Sade’s familiar sounding velvety Contralto. Live Nation artist tickets were sold out right away-no luck in May, I’m sure she’ll be visiting Toronto again!

What was recommended: Taiwan Beats (ABAO) Aljenljeng, JADE EYES and Dizparity

What I enjoyed: Ottawa MC @draemusic. He closed out for two of T.O.s hottest crooners: Tika and Sophia Danai! That night was electrifying (TIKA, HMLT,Sophia Danai and BAYLA.)  Drae laid some strong lyrics with a very. live. band. I’m lovin’ the live band and MC sound all over again!

Can’t wait to hear what next year’ll bring!

Beauty, Biography, Establishments, events, Fashion & Beauty, Movers & Shakers, Public Relations, Social Media, Toronto

Blogger Fashion Week May 5 -11: Shop Your Favourite Blogger’s Closet During Blogger Fashion Week

theshineprjct

Toronto, ON (April 29, 2014) – Want to score the latest fashion find from your favourite blogger? Look no further! From May 5th to 11th, fashion addicts across Canada can shop the closets of 100 of Canada’s emerging and established bloggers on www.BloggerFashionWeek.com – a rare opportunity for those with a passion for fashion.

<<“I’m thrilled to participate once again in Blogger Fashion Week! Not only a fabulous way to fall in love with newly discovered Canadian blogs, Blogger Fashion Week takes fashion to a whole new level for shopping from some of the most stylish closets.” said Becky Kung, founder of Velvet & Vino, one of Canada’s top fashion bloggers>>.

Every day of Blogger Fashion Week, a limited number of bloggers’ closets will be unlocked and ready to be shopped! Several bloggers will donate up to 100% of their proceeds to their favourite non-profit or charity through Trend Trunks’ Closets & Causes Program.

“We’re looking forward to helping bloggers grow the relationship with their fans and followers through this unique campaign. It’s extremely exciting to be launching our second Blogger Fashion Week right here in Canada with such an amazing group of bloggers and sponsors!” said Sean Snyder, Founder and President of Trend Trunk.

Connect with your favourite bloggers during #BFWand get a chance to nab their personal style at www.BloggerFashionWeek.com

About Trend Trunk

Trend Trunk is an award-winning company, which has created a social community and the leading app and web-based fashion marketplace in Canada. Recently featured on the Marilyn Denis Show and Cityline, the brand also pitched their innovative concept to a panel of Canadian business moguls on CBC‘s hit show Dragon’s Den, aired in November of 2013. For more information visit www.TrendTrunk.com

 

About FASHION Magazine

Bringing the world of international fashion home to its style-conscious readers, FASHION looks at global trends, up-to-the-minute reports on what’s in Canadian stores now and expert takes on fashion, beauty and style. FASHION is the #1 fashion and beauty brand in Canada with more than 1.7 million readers of FASHION Magazine* and has Canada’s largest fashion social audience including over 514,000 Twitter followers and 213,000 Facebook likes.

*Source: PMB

 

Chinedu Egwuenu

Consumer/Lifestyle Blogger

Emai:pr.urbcomgrp@gmail.com

Sean Snyder

Founder, Trend Trunk

sean@trendtrunk.com

416-577-7326

tt

Fashion Mag

 

 

sd

Establishments, events, Movers & Shakers, Music, Public Relations, Social Media, Toronto

(March 24th 2014 11:00 ET) Album Release Event – Soul Movement 2 Slakah The Beatchild

theshineprjct

Slakah Funky pants

Soul Movement 2 – A Long Time Coming

Toronto, ONTARIO–(The Collective/BBE) April 10, 2014 – The Collective is pleased to announce the highly anticipated release of Soul Movement 2! Toronto’s son returns home after a 5 year pause and releases follow-up album Soul Movement 2 in Canada with a live and intimate exchange next month April 10th at the Drake Underground. The show will be co-hosted and DJ’ed by Djaysoulchild with guests Melanie Durrant, Spek Won and super special guest!

What started as a one-time project became a journey of experiences, wisdom with liquid funk and soul. SM2’s ‘tracks showcase Beatchild’s extraordinary ability to blend elements of different genres seamlessly, whilst still maintaining a signature sound as a producer and (artist)-‘RnB producers are a dime a dozen these days, but artists that can create and maintain a unique sound are few and far between and I think Slakah The Beatchild falls neatly into this category’ (Newsoulreview).

This event promises to showcase to Canadian fans and long time enthusiasts who’ve been waiting for a continuation of Slakah’s Soul Movement 1. SM2 is a component of a multi Soul Movement release. His popularity overseas left him humbled ‘they loved me over there, I’ve performed for sold out audiences….ultimately I want to share my new stuff with people here at home…I promised I’d make another album; so here it is’.

Five years later, Soul Movement 2’s list of guest features, delivers the kind of guest line-up that leaves creative soul music connoisseurs on edge! Spek Won, Glenn Lewis, Maylee Todd and Shad all help show his growth and development as an artist and songwriter. When asked about influences he says ‘nothing new really….everything from the past, I’m an old soul that way’.

SM2 follows the same formula as the previous Soul Movement with a mixture of Funk, Soul and Hip Hop joints. Including tracks from The Bamboos, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, James Brown, The Budos Band and more…

#Adventurefor2 one of the singles off the album is the theme for online prize giveaways Twitter! Using the hashtag will enter all fans into the ‘Soul Movement 2’ Album Release Party Contest!

 

Slakah the Beatchild\BBE-An accomplished and eclectic artist, works with artists around the world producing everything from R&B to rock earning 3 Juno nominations (Canadian Grammy). He’s worked with major labels such as BBE, Universal, Warner, SonyBMG & Somerset Ent and runs his own production studio Beatchild Productions. In addition to producing for others, Slakah the Beatchild performs as a solo artist & DJ.

 

 

Follow here for details about the show:
@beatchild
@djaysoulchild
@bbemusic
See you there,

-shine

Knowledge, Public Relations, Reflections, Social Media, Toronto

Did Your Client Even Try?

theshineprjct

20130802-183210.jpgAs a freelancer embracing opportunities and leads like a private investigator-I’ve come across some very interesting circumstances. These situations have become synonymous with most clients and situations which led me to write this piece.

When deciding to take on a project whether its paid or not I’ve understood in the last few years that if the client is looking for: a) money b)fame c)endorsement with any of the work you will be doing for them, you are most definitely headed for disaster! Rather than any one of those three driving forces, a client looking to understand what the social media machine means to their business and to themselves as owner/CEO of the business is a key component to my willingness to work with them.

The progress the client/potential client has made since they’ve embraced any form of media-whether it’s a website, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. will translate into how fruitful or complicated the undertaking of the assignment will be.

Clients/partners/collaborators can fall into a few categories:
Client 1: has no idea what social media is but needs help and is open to listen and learn
Client 2: has no idea what ‘new age’ promotion is and unwilling to listen/learn or relinquish control over to you
Client 3: has an idea about social media but doesn’t understand how it can grow a business (but uses it personally-sometimes a little too personally)
Client 4: making very little effort and wants to hand everything over to you to take over (ideal but comes at a cost-financially and brand marketing wise)
Client 5: has an idea what SM is/does but doesn’t use it for business and wants their work/brand/company to speak for itself (possibly living in a bubble or under a rock)

I am not pointing this breakdown at anyone in particular but I’m sure anyone working in the event promotion, marketing, public relations or social media industries would understand the path I’m trying to follow with this article.

If your client does not know how they can highlight their business, service, art, image, brand to the public-no amount of assistance from the best team will help.

So far I’ve found that the clients I prefer to work with and the ones with the most successes or growth besides making money are the ones who’ve tried and (need an extra hand), or those who are starting social media or promotion from the ground up. On the other hand existing brands making transitions from the old style to the ‘new school’ are at a major advantage to grow their reach and influence by tweaking their message.

Brands or entities with a huge fan base or stellar image or body of work can and do grow their businesses in areas they had never imagined possible.

I promise you that anyone seeing your vision as an artist, musician, business, brand will want to do what’s best to see you succeed.

Remember, your work is as good as your client’s efforts! Visit us over at @urbcomgrp_pr for tips and tricks!