As we reach our 21st post on the MyMusicSuccess blog, we wanted to mark the occasion by bringing you the story behind the company.MyMusicSuccess was founded by Simon Adams, a music producer with over 25 years of experience in the music industry.
As a musician, producer, promoter and entrepreneur he has experienced 3 decades of change in the music industry, and with it he has seen the empowerment that technology and new media can bring to independent artists worldwide.
His passion and vision for independent artists bring an infectious inspiration to clients of MyMusicSuccess resulting in amazing new paths to achieving their goals.
Here Simon outlines just some of his experiences through the last 3 decades of music.
You won’t find many people that can say they can appreciate Country, Pop, Rock, & Dance all at the same time, but I’ve experienced an amazing array of musical styles in my career.
Artists & musicians can be summed up by two things, the people who provide the passion (usually borne out of a life of pain, whatever the story) and the songs (almost always borne out of the same pain).
It’s a universal thing in music, whatever the genre. Out of that passion, pain and song writing mix comes something magical. When I see that magic all I want to do is share it with people feeling similar pain. I believe that music has an amazing effect on people because a song holds energy which can get transferred to millions of people.
I am sure that everyone has felt the hairs stand up on the back of their neck when they hear a song that touches their lives; it never ceases to inspire and amaze me what music can do.
What I have seen over the years is that artists, whatever the genre, who are feeling the pain, writing the songs, and pouring their hearts out at gigs, find it really difficult to become objective at harnessing the power of their music, and sharing the gift effectively. Sometimes you can be too close to the music, sometimes it can be a confidence thing, or just the way you have been programmed by those around you. So many gifted and talented people have stopped nurturing their gift because of the fear of others opinions.
It all started in the UK with my first gig promotion at 8 years old, when I took a battered old guitar stood up in front of 300 kids at my school and did a bluegrass country rendition of ‘Bright Eyes’ from the film Watership Down. I organised some of the best kids from the music class together, approached the music tutor and asked to put on the cream of his pupils at the next Monday morning assembly, of course I booked myself as the headliner!
For the next 5 years I dedicated myself to learning how the great musicians and artists crafted their trade. I studied people like Mark Knopfler, John Williams & Sky, Eric Clapton and some of the other guitar heroes of the time.
Through my teenage years I not only managed and fronted the punk / pop band Volume III, but also spent a lot of time on the festival scene learning how bands worked the circuit and got exposure. Alongside the lavish major label extravagances of the 80’s (which created some amazing legacies, Simple Minds, U2, Dire Straits to name a few) there was a
nother underground culture of independent music evolving, and in many ways the 80’s could be described as the start of independent music, where we saw many small labels tread new ground. But I feel it was two decades before its time.
I’d love to have seen where we were at now if the internet had been around in the 80s.
After my band Volume III split in the mid 80’s and music technology started infiltrating the music production scene, I became enthralled by the self empowerment that was happening stateside. The Chicago house scene was exploding, the 808 drum machine was being brought into the DJ scene, and electronic music was being born out of this innovation.
Kevin Saunderson, DJ Pierre, and many others were influencing people like the Pet Shop Boys and underground music was being taken into the mainstream. Suddenly I found myself setting up a studio with 8 track recorders, synthesisers, Roland guitar synths and drum machines and a stack of equipment that would have cost an oil emirates inheritance to buy just a few years before.
I quickly got to work developing tracks, looking for ways to work them through local clubs, but back then if you wanted to make any impact on the music scene, you still needed some sort of label support and major investment to reach a lot of people.
Through the 90’s I continued my musical passion, but being a born communicator got frustrated at how difficult it was to make your music heard. For a while I stopped making music, and went off to journalism college to start studying to become a radio reporter. In the late 90’s I set up a community radio network in L
ondon, hosted radio shows covering country, pop and dance and interviewed many upcoming artists that I could see were all going through what I had experienced. Getting your music heard seemed to be a struggle for independent artists. There had to be some way to make this easier.
It was whilst managing one of the radio stations I had set up that I met fellow entertainer and radio host Katy D. a friend had lent me a computer and some music equipment at the time, and I asked her to sing on a demo I was producing. Suddenly that unique magic I was talking about earlier reared its head, and unbeknown to me at the time the new dance music project ‘Kandystand’ was born. I gave up radio and went back to making music, and never looked back.
Fast forwarding to 2004, Under the pseudonym 'DJ Alodis' I started producing Hi-Nrg dance music and launched the first Kandystand single, a dance cover of ‘Alone’ by the rock band ‘Heart’ (I was always a sucker for power ballads, the pain and passion in them virtually guaranteed the song’s success).
By now the internet had started creeping into peoples lives, and those who were inquisitive enough would avidly wait while our 56k modems did their little dial tone performance and eventually connected to the world wide web. Suddenly the world became a smaller place and every man and his dog had their music on CD Baby.
Of course with the advent of the internet and its power of mass communication we saw the quick progression of not only people chatting and emailing each other, but suddenly they were able to share files, and of course music. People ripped CD’s, put them on websites in any format they could (whatever happened to Real Player remember them?). The music industry didn’t see this one coming that’s for sure.
Did I see the same story as the majors back in 2004 when I put out the first Kandystand single. Not in a million years.
This is what I had been waiting 20 years for. Finally I could let millions of people hear the music I had been making, I could get in touch with people that economics stopped me contacting before. I could set up a storefront on the web; I felt the same thing I felt when music technology started changing how music was made in the 80’s. This was a revolution.
I made sure that I was in touch with every technology, researching what it could do, how you could take the best out of what I had learnt in the last 20 years and combine it with the tools that were coming out of the internet age to make an impact in the independent music sector.
I set up a new media company Team Hayward Media with the sole intention of researching and tracking these changes, utilising my experience of radio, music, journalism, and promotion I could see a vision where artists really could have what the major labels had only previously enjoyed.
For the next 5 years I used my project ‘Kandystand’ as the guinea pig, getting a team of people together across a numb
er of countries, graphic artists, promotion specialists, writers, music champions, remixers and many more. Kandystand’s music started selling like hotcakes in places we could never have imagined. We were getting orders from California, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and in places I didn’t even know existed. I needed to find out why this was happening, so I could replicate it every time we released a single.
When I delved into the depths of my website stats, and the internet as a whole, I couldn’t believe how far and wide Kandystand’s music had spread. Mostly on illegal file sharing networks, and at first I felt like my soul had been spread across the web for free. I quickly realised though that what I had found is a global street team that I had been searching for all these years. Millions of promoters who liked the music, recommended it to their friends, a lot of which sought it out online legally and bought the tracks.
This was good and we wanted more, so spent some time analysing how we could use more tools like this and fully utilise the power of the internet. We went to blogs, the new music press, where everyone who wanted to get the latest music news was hanging out, and took out advertising on the blogs. Sales continued to rise. We went to podcasts, forums, online radio, college and local radio (who by now were also harnessing the internet to gain listenership and raise their profile). We got airplay in Europe, USA and Australia. We also got promotion in Japan who loved our style of European pop.
So here we are in 2009, and I’ve moved the team at Team Hayward Media into our new project ‘MyMusicSuccess’. With 25 years experience of the music and media industry behind us, we felt its time to share my music success with others so it can become their music success.
All this time later I’m still producing for Kandystand under the name 'DJ Alodis', and still listening to so many new genres of music, including of course country, rock, pop and dance. Some things clearly never change….
As a musician, producer, promoter and entrepreneur he has experienced 3 decades of change in the music industry, and with it he has seen the empowerment that technology and new media can bring to independent artists worldwide.
His passion and vision for independent artists bring an infectious inspiration to clients of MyMusicSuccess resulting in amazing new paths to achieving their goals.
Here Simon outlines just some of his experiences through the last 3 decades of music.
You won’t find many people that can say they can appreciate Country, Pop, Rock, & Dance all at the same time, but I’ve experienced an amazing array of musical styles in my career.
Artists & musicians can be summed up by two things, the people who provide the passion (usually borne out of a life of pain, whatever the story) and the songs (almost always borne out of the same pain).
It’s a universal thing in music, whatever the genre. Out of that passion, pain and song writing mix comes something magical. When I see that magic all I want to do is share it with people feeling similar pain. I believe that music has an amazing effect on people because a song holds energy which can get transferred to millions of people.
I am sure that everyone has felt the hairs stand up on the back of their neck when they hear a song that touches their lives; it never ceases to inspire and amaze me what music can do.
What I have seen over the years is that artists, whatever the genre, who are feeling the pain, writing the songs, and pouring their hearts out at gigs, find it really difficult to become objective at harnessing the power of their music, and sharing the gift effectively. Sometimes you can be too close to the music, sometimes it can be a confidence thing, or just the way you have been programmed by those around you. So many gifted and talented people have stopped nurturing their gift because of the fear of others opinions.
It all started in the UK with my first gig promotion at 8 years old, when I took a battered old guitar stood up in front of 300 kids at my school and did a bluegrass country rendition of ‘Bright Eyes’ from the film Watership Down. I organised some of the best kids from the music class together, approached the music tutor and asked to put on the cream of his pupils at the next Monday morning assembly, of course I booked myself as the headliner!
For the next 5 years I dedicated myself to learning how the great musicians and artists crafted their trade. I studied people like Mark Knopfler, John Williams & Sky, Eric Clapton and some of the other guitar heroes of the time.
Through my teenage years I not only managed and fronted the punk / pop band Volume III, but also spent a lot of time on the festival scene learning how bands worked the circuit and got exposure. Alongside the lavish major label extravagances of the 80’s (which created some amazing legacies, Simple Minds, U2, Dire Straits to name a few) there was a
nother underground culture of independent music evolving, and in many ways the 80’s could be described as the start of independent music, where we saw many small labels tread new ground. But I feel it was two decades before its time.I’d love to have seen where we were at now if the internet had been around in the 80s.
After my band Volume III split in the mid 80’s and music technology started infiltrating the music production scene, I became enthralled by the self empowerment that was happening stateside. The Chicago house scene was exploding, the 808 drum machine was being brought into the DJ scene, and electronic music was being born out of this innovation.
Kevin Saunderson, DJ Pierre, and many others were influencing people like the Pet Shop Boys and underground music was being taken into the mainstream. Suddenly I found myself setting up a studio with 8 track recorders, synthesisers, Roland guitar synths and drum machines and a stack of equipment that would have cost an oil emirates inheritance to buy just a few years before.
I quickly got to work developing tracks, looking for ways to work them through local clubs, but back then if you wanted to make any impact on the music scene, you still needed some sort of label support and major investment to reach a lot of people.
Through the 90’s I continued my musical passion, but being a born communicator got frustrated at how difficult it was to make your music heard. For a while I stopped making music, and went off to journalism college to start studying to become a radio reporter. In the late 90’s I set up a community radio network in L
ondon, hosted radio shows covering country, pop and dance and interviewed many upcoming artists that I could see were all going through what I had experienced. Getting your music heard seemed to be a struggle for independent artists. There had to be some way to make this easier.It was whilst managing one of the radio stations I had set up that I met fellow entertainer and radio host Katy D. a friend had lent me a computer and some music equipment at the time, and I asked her to sing on a demo I was producing. Suddenly that unique magic I was talking about earlier reared its head, and unbeknown to me at the time the new dance music project ‘Kandystand’ was born. I gave up radio and went back to making music, and never looked back.
Fast forwarding to 2004, Under the pseudonym 'DJ Alodis' I started producing Hi-Nrg dance music and launched the first Kandystand single, a dance cover of ‘Alone’ by the rock band ‘Heart’ (I was always a sucker for power ballads, the pain and passion in them virtually guaranteed the song’s success).
By now the internet had started creeping into peoples lives, and those who were inquisitive enough would avidly wait while our 56k modems did their little dial tone performance and eventually connected to the world wide web. Suddenly the world became a smaller place and every man and his dog had their music on CD Baby.
Of course with the advent of the internet and its power of mass communication we saw the quick progression of not only people chatting and emailing each other, but suddenly they were able to share files, and of course music. People ripped CD’s, put them on websites in any format they could (whatever happened to Real Player remember them?). The music industry didn’t see this one coming that’s for sure.
Did I see the same story as the majors back in 2004 when I put out the first Kandystand single. Not in a million years.
This is what I had been waiting 20 years for. Finally I could let millions of people hear the music I had been making, I could get in touch with people that economics stopped me contacting before. I could set up a storefront on the web; I felt the same thing I felt when music technology started changing how music was made in the 80’s. This was a revolution.
I made sure that I was in touch with every technology, researching what it could do, how you could take the best out of what I had learnt in the last 20 years and combine it with the tools that were coming out of the internet age to make an impact in the independent music sector.
I set up a new media company Team Hayward Media with the sole intention of researching and tracking these changes, utilising my experience of radio, music, journalism, and promotion I could see a vision where artists really could have what the major labels had only previously enjoyed.
For the next 5 years I used my project ‘Kandystand’ as the guinea pig, getting a team of people together across a numb
er of countries, graphic artists, promotion specialists, writers, music champions, remixers and many more. Kandystand’s music started selling like hotcakes in places we could never have imagined. We were getting orders from California, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and in places I didn’t even know existed. I needed to find out why this was happening, so I could replicate it every time we released a single.When I delved into the depths of my website stats, and the internet as a whole, I couldn’t believe how far and wide Kandystand’s music had spread. Mostly on illegal file sharing networks, and at first I felt like my soul had been spread across the web for free. I quickly realised though that what I had found is a global street team that I had been searching for all these years. Millions of promoters who liked the music, recommended it to their friends, a lot of which sought it out online legally and bought the tracks.
This was good and we wanted more, so spent some time analysing how we could use more tools like this and fully utilise the power of the internet. We went to blogs, the new music press, where everyone who wanted to get the latest music news was hanging out, and took out advertising on the blogs. Sales continued to rise. We went to podcasts, forums, online radio, college and local radio (who by now were also harnessing the internet to gain listenership and raise their profile). We got airplay in Europe, USA and Australia. We also got promotion in Japan who loved our style of European pop.
So here we are in 2009, and I’ve moved the team at Team Hayward Media into our new project ‘MyMusicSuccess’. With 25 years experience of the music and media industry behind us, we felt its time to share my music success with others so it can become their music success.
All this time later I’m still producing for Kandystand under the name 'DJ Alodis', and still listening to so many new genres of music, including of course country, rock, pop and dance. Some things clearly never change….
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