Our Music Industry feature shines a light on people who are doing great things to help new artists and give everybody a chance to succeed in the music business. To that end, we recently discovered Quadri Haruna, the Creative Director of QH Sound, a Kent-based music startup that aims to promote unsigned musicians.
QH Sound, based in Canterbury, is a music community and label base that has evolved to focus on emerging artists. In Quadri’s words: “The company started over a decade ago and over time has evolved to what it is today, discovering musical talent and providing opportunities for progression in the music industry. We also offer bespoke music services to musicians and record labels alike.”
The latest example of this is the first edition of QH Sound’s Unsigned Collection, Unsigned Collection Volume 1, which was released on Friday (12 April).
On the collection, Quadri told us: “Unsigned Collection is a series of eclectic compilation album CDs. The initiative is to unearth talented new-and-emerging musical acts across the UK, with each volume focusing on talents from a specific region or county, then promote and distribute not just to music fans but across the music industry to record labels, agencies, media outlets, etc…
“We chose to make Unsigned Collection exclusively physical to help featured artists stand out from the crowd of countless digital music, albums, playlists being released every day. We have taken a nostalgic approach, hoping also to rekindle the excitement experienced in discovering new music at record shops.”
The first collection features new music from a wide range of artists across various genres, offering a little bit of something for everyone. This includes post-hardcore band Seek Harbour, who we featured as our New Band of the Week in December 2021, along with fellow rockers We Found The Wreck, The King Rooks, The Super Micks and alt-rock rapper Jude Ness.
The collection also features indie artists grassmell and Matthew Wright, Charles HS, singer/songwriters Daniel McGuinness, Aid Lewis, Megan Wardroper, Jasmin Fairhall, Lee Willz and Kid Hue, rappers Char.B and Kali, R&B artists like Blaize China and Chidimma, multi-instrumentalist and producer Little Tealeif, and instrumental group The Midnight River Crew.
And Quadri added: “We selected 20 artists and bands out of over 400 submissions from Kent. The final 20 were selected based on diversity, originality and star potential. Our main focus at the moment is to continue developing the Unsigned Collection because it allows us to support multiple artists and bands simultaneously, it also helps connect the acts to grow their network. Upon saying that, QH Sound is also a record label so we are keeping a close eye on every music submission and featured acts.”
Unsigned Collection Volume 1 was released on Friday (12 April). The album highlights Kent-based artists and bands and the CD is available for free in record shops across the county now. The full list of partner record shops is available here. QH Sound has already started accepting submissions for Unsigned Collection Volume 2 and will soon announce the chosen region, so put your music forward for submission on their website.
You can follow QH Sound on Instagram and Facebook, visit their website for more information, and email them at info@qhsound.co.uk.
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