August 2020 has all rights to become some sort of calm bay before the open ocean, but all that is not for sure. Let’s not make any predictions, but enjoy the best Ukrainian music experience for the last month.
Spotify is finally launched in Ukraine since July 15th. Before that, Ukrainians used to enjoy music via Apple Music, Google Play Music and Youtube Music, Deezer and other streaming services. This launch facilitates a handy way of exploring our music from now on. The launch was promoted by celebrity video challenge in Instagram by Ukrainian top singers Monatik, NK, ONUKA, Max Barskih and MARUV. In Ukraine Spotify launched three playlists: indie, pop hits and new music, as well as playlists by Ukrainian artists called “This Is”. In addition, the platform is also preparing charts for countries, including Ukraine - Top 50 and Viral 50, so stay tuned!
It is amazing to see how music industry professionals find new opportunities at the time of the lockdown. For example, Atlas Weekend and M1 music channel amazed everyone with their live concert creative digital solution.
Instead of the cancelled open air festival this summer, whole week of July 7-12 the Atlas Weekend Days 2020 was offering radio versions of the most beloved previous festival’s gigs of the local artists. Organizers also did the online stream of live dj set played on a Virtual Stage installed on a barge in the middle of Dnipro river in Kyiv with the audience watching from yachts. The Fest ended up with Cosmic Weekend broadcasted via M1 music channel using 3D technology recreating the live concert with the “cosmic” audience and hosts recreating alien urban landscape.
Another creative solution was created by the lord of Ukrainian women's hearts Oleg Vynnyk. The event physically took place at the Olimpiysky National Sports Complex in Kyiv, but was broadcasted online. The concert enjoyed about 100 thousand people from all over the world via AR and VR technologies. This event marked to be the first stadium show in the history of Ukraine, which viewers watched solely online.
What else?
- Opportunities for collaboration: Ukrainian electroacoustic ensemble band DZ’OB launched a project of creating compositions based on their music. For this project is a highly important creative and non-trivial approach in music creating. There are no genre preferences - it could be a modern classical piece, jazz variations, IDM, or song accompanied by а guitar. All experiments are welcomed. Application and details can be found here.
- The piece of news that brightened our day. On July 10, Mike Shinoda, Linkin Park's main driving force, released a solo album “Dropped Frames, Vol. 1”. Among the participants in the first album’s singe “Open Door” listed Slava – Vyacheslav Pitak – Odessa-based musician and a huge fan of Linkin Park. He became one of the 7 finalists of the band frontman’s competition, in which he recorded a video with his version of the song’s vocals and uploaded it with the hashtag #singopendoor on Twitter and Instagram. After Slava was selected, Shinoda asked for a studio version that was used in the final version of the release. Seems like everything is possible, so don’t give up dreaming, folks!
