recordlabel

2022 is soon to be history, and a fun year to look back at, for our label.

December 31, 2022 by Whispering Voice Records

We are now 2 years in the making of a long-held dream of mine come true. Whispering Voice Records AS has become a company that is viable on it’s own, and we will start focusing on the next step of the dream, which is Whispering Voice Studios, and getting that up and running.

The label started 2022 by joining the Ifpi Norway family, which houses 23 members. Internationally Ifpi has 8000 members divided on 70 countries. This gave us some great tools to work with and gave us an even better overview of the result from our campaigns. At the end of the year we also saw the start of Music Nest Norway, which we joined as soon as applications were opened,

We also signed more artists in 2022, resulting in several digital and physical releases.

The first band out this year was the band Snøstorm. The duo residing in Norway and Bulgaria made a killer album called ‘Tales of the end’.

Tales of the end

Tales od the End was released 29th of april, and consisting of 7 tracks with lyrics in either Norwegian or English, the album was released both digitally and physically as a digipak.

The track ‘Slava Ukraine’ featured several languages, and the lyrics was written in English, Norwegian and Ukrainian, in honor of the Ukrainian people fighting against their oppressors

Mellom bakkar og berg

Snøstorm also released a digital singel, a cover of the anthem ‘Mellom bakkar og berg’ from the Norwegian poem ‘Nordmannen’ (the Norwegian in English). A lyric-video was released on the labels YouTube, which was filmed and produced by Whispering Voice Studios.

Fjord

2022 was also the year we signed the Norwegian newcomers ‘Nidhög’, who released their debut-ep ‘Fjord’. These talented guys wanted to put some of the old second wave Norwegian black metal back into play, and with the ep being produced by none other than Tom Kvålsvoll from Kvalsonic lab, the guys did just that. The band is working on their second release, and a lyric-video is also in the works

Vandari

The last release of 2022 was ‘Vandari’ by the polish band Cortege. The 12-track death-metal album was released late November, both digitally and physically. Vandari is the bands third full-length album

The band also recently released a musicvideo, featuring the track ‘Filth‘ from the Vandari-album.

Least, but not last, 2022 was also the year we finally got ‘Into the realm of the Occult’ by Arvas back on to the streaming-services. After many years of missing, it is now finally back and available. The album was originally released in 2013, and after striking a deal at the end of 2021, the label finally got ownership of the album, and made sure it got released online.

We’ve also supported the extreme version of the Norwegian metal-festival Northern Deception Metal Festival, which was held in September in Kristiansand. The festival featured band as Mork, Gehenna, Nordjevel and Crest of Darkness, and many other great bands.

So what’s in store for the label in 2023?

We allready have a new signing in place, and there are also more albums to come, from new artists and artists that are allready in our rooster.

Arvas recorded a singel in 2022 that we hopefully will see the result of in 2023, but we will start of the new year with the release of a new artist.

In 2022 we saw what was the beginning of a brand new studio; Whispering Voice Studios. We will have a bigger focus on production in 2023, making the studio more live and buzzing.

We will also see the a brand new wepshop coming up in the early 2023, with loads of merch from all our artists, and also some cool metal-stuff in general.

We will continue to support Northern Deception Metal Festival, and hopefully we will see even more people in front of the stage.

So for now, we wish you all a happy new year, and hope you also follow us in 2023

What should you expect from a recordlabel? (Part 1)

September 10, 2021 by Whispering Voice Records

label, promotion, recordlabel, signing

In a series of posts we will discuss what you as an artist should expect from the label you are signing up with. And even though we should be starting with the obvious, which is the contract, or agreement, this part is so extensive that we’re saving that for later. Before we get into contract-making, we feel it might be nice to have a little knowledge about some other stuff that is usefull to know before signing any deal. One of them being;

Promotion

There are a few minimum requirements that a recordlabel should provide their artists. One of them being promotion. Perhaps one of the most important one Unless you’re allready a major selling artist, music simply does not sell itself. It needs to be promoted, and it need to be promoted well.

Here at Whispering Voice Records we do our very best for all artists under our wings. We do so not only by operating with independent promoteurs all over the world, but we do so by doing targeted and effectful promotion. This means that we do not simply put a post up on Facebook and expect big results. In order to reach out we to the research first.

Finding out what media has the best chance of reaching your type of audience, for the music you are releasing, is something we are really good at.

But have the knowling of what to spend, and where, is often a result of trial and error, AND a learning skill.

This is not done in a day, even if the label have used the same promoters before. No artists are ever the same, and neither is the music. Using the same promotion-tactics on all rleases will surely fail, sooner or later.

A label that isn’t willing to spend the least amount of money on promoting your music, is a label that has no faith in it

Remember, no good promotion is ever free. Putting adds in different magazines, webzines and even radio, costs money. But doing this right can mean the difference between cash and trash. And a label that isn’t willing to spend the least amount of money on promoting your music, is a labe that has no faith in your music. Then you become just another rooster-filler.

For some labels, it’s all about the numbers-game. The quanta. The more music a label can release, the more dineros they can cash out. But for each band it amounds to such a small amount that it doesn’t even cover the cost of publishing. In other words, the band doesn’t see a dime.

So before signing with a label, you should make sure to ask them what kind of promotion they do. It’s a fair question, and it should have a fair answer.