All Access New Dance Section and the Grammys - January 29 2014 - DMC# 12

Dance Music Consultant's podcast

Greetings and thanks for taking the time to check out this, episode number 12 of the Dance Music Consultant Podcast. My name is John Parker and I started this podcast to give you some insight on the wonderful world of dance music. Today I talk about the Grammy's and the brand new dance section in All Access. I’ll also give you my pick hit of the week. All that and more coming up on this episode number 12 of the Dance Music Consultant podcast.

“Ministry of Sound to release a new CD series called “Inspired”

Tommy Trash has signed up to host the opening installment of Ministry of Sound’s new series, “Inspired”. The 2 disc set will be 29 tracks and be split into a “Past Inspirations” disc and a “Present Inspirations” disc. Tommy says, “It’s really good to take a step back and look at what music informed the tracks myself and probably quite a lot of my peers make today.” Targeted release date is March 16^th.

“Robbie Rivera’s Juicy Beach announces it’s 2014 WMC Lineup”

Juicy Beach announced that it will be at Nikki Beach on March 27^th for it’s annual gathering with a star studded cast of talent that includes, Funkagenda, EDX, Sick Individuals, Tom Swoon, Henry Fong, Maurizio Gubellini and Juicy Beach founder, Robbie Rivera. Tickets are available now on Wantickets.com

Armin van Buuren to play Ultra Music Festival as GAIA

Armin van Buuren has decided to use the “GAIA” alias at Ultrafest this year because he’s decided to deliver a full set of trance hits. This falls in line with his decision to try and bring back some of the trance vibe to the festival circuit this year. According to Ultra Music Festivals Instagram account, “AVB will be taking a purist’s approach, as he gears up to deliver a set chocked full of nothing but trance.”

A Tribe Called Disclosure?

Hip Hop Legend, Q-Tip, took to Instagram this past weekend to reveal that he’s in the studio with Disclosure’s Guy and Howard Lawrence. No word on if this is for a collaboration for him or the groups upcoming projects but when you combine that with the fact that R&B legend, Mary J. Blige, recently joined Disclosure on stage at a recent appearance in NYC, it’s make you wonder if EDM is looking to get a little funkier.

That’s going to do it for the news this week.

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So if you haven’t heard last Friday All Access debuted an all new Dance Music section that I’m proud to be a co-editor of. You may remember the FMQB section that I’ve been putting together the charts for, for the last 5 years and I wrote the dance news column for a couple of years before that. A press release went out to the industry last week and I’d like to read it to you:

“It's with great excitement that ALLACCESS.COM, the leading radio and music one-stop destination, makes an important expansion with the launch of the new ALL ACCESS Dance Music format section that is now live. It will cover all genres of Dance including EDM and is designed to become the go-to destination for anyone who has a love and passion for Dance.

Veteran Dance format promoters and experts CARY VANCE and JOHN PARKER, the leaders in the format, have signed on as the ALL ACCESS Dance Music Format Editors in addition to their on-going promotion business.

The ALL ACCESS Dance Format pages will also be the home of a 50-position Dance Chart featuring the airplay and adds of some of the most influential monitored, non-monitored and Internet Dance stations in America.

Additionally, the ALL ACCESS Dance format section will be loaded with popular features like ALL ACCESS Downloads, Cool New Music, Hot Picks, 10 Questions (this week featuring MARTIN GARRIX, Artist Info, Industry Snaps and so much more -- all designed to address the needs of the Dance community.

ALL ACCESS Pres./Publisher JOEL DENVER commented, “CARY and JOHN are without question the most experienced Dance experts in the format. Their relationships with radio, labels and artists are unsurpassed. CARY and I have been discussing this idea for months, and have taken our time to execute the presentation of an ALL ACCESS Dance format section properly.

"With CARY and JOHN's expertise, I know that the content will be perfect. It will be loaded with new music ready for programmers to discover, download and play -- as well as view the latest videos. And, there are some major additional content surprises coming soon."

VANCE remarked, "I have been a fan of ALL ACCESS since the day it launched. The commitment that JOEL is giving to JOHN and me to oversee the ALL ACCESS Dance Music format section is sure to bring increased visibility and credibility to this genre.

"I am extremely excited for the support that ALL ACCESS is giving to the Dance genre. This Dance section, with its charts and many features, coupled with our continued promoting and marketing efforts of the biggest and best talent on a day-to-day basis is sure to take Dance music to an even wider audience."

Now, I do have a couple of things that I'd like to clear up and say because it seems that some people are a little confused by what’s happening.

Cary and I still work for Promo Only Promotions. We have no intention of that changing. Our main focus will continue to be to deliver the best results for our client base at radio and mix shows. That is never going to change. We are thankful and proud to be the #1 name in Dance Radio and Mix Show promotions.

I want to thank Bob Burke and the FMQB family for the amazing job they did over the last 5 years that I've been putting together the charts and for several years before I got here (Promo Only Promotions) when I wrote the dance news section. They, like us, did it as a pure labor of love for the format. I have tremendous respect for what Bob and that team does. Glad to call him a friend.

Thank you to the team at All Access that has worked extremely hard to put the site together. A tremendous effort and a great job. Have to say Thanks Joel Denver for the opportunity to spread our love of dance music to your empire!

I really believe that this could be a breakthrough moment for the format. We have the opportunity to get through to that final pocket of resistance and maybe get the message across that this format will benefit stations willing to put it on their frequency. Good things for us all. Look for the section to expand in the coming weeks to include more charts and more being done with the mix show djs.

So with all that said, if you are an artist, label or just someone that works in dance music, we are looking for your news and publicity updates. You can send those to me for All Access at [e-mail]

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Grammys

So what did you think about this years Grammys? I missed the opening and got to see Beyonce walking off stage with Jay Z but was told that I didn’t really miss much. Really glad to hear that Kraftwerk received a Lifetime Achievement grammy. Congrats to Cedric Gervais for his best remix award and to Zedd and Foxes for picking up the Best Dance Recording Grammy for Clarity but there is no doubt that the Dance Act that stole this years show was Daft Punk. Winners of Record of the Year for “Get Lucky”, Album of the Year, Best Pop Duo/Group performance and Best Dance/Electronica Album. The robots showed up to tell the world that Dance Music is back, even if it was with a retro sound.

I really don’t have that much to complain about the Grammy's this year. I totally agree with the winners in the dance categories for the first time ever. Usually, there is what looks like political nonsense going on with the category but I didn’t feel that way this year. As some of you may know, I have a real problem with the way the Grammy's selects nominees for the dance section. I’ve been told that there is no longer a secret committee that determines the nominees but I don’t believe it. I actually stopped renewing my membership in NARAS years ago because of the shenanigans that I felt were taking place.

Normally the Grammy's work by NARAS members or labels submitting music to be considered for the nomination ballot. Many people that don’t know any better or just want to flat out lie, will say there were nominated for a Grammy because they nominated themselves by submitting music.

The next step is for NARAS to qualify the submissions. They make sure that they came out during the eligible period and that they are submitted to the proper genre.

Then those songs that make it through the process are listed in a big book of possible nominees. Voting members are then given a ballot to vote on who will be the actual nominees that we all see.

But a couple of years into the Grammy's for Dance music, they changed it because the too cool for the room kids decided that there was something wrong with the process. They didn’t want the Donna Summers of the world winning. So they got the Academy to change it to first allowing a secret committee to select the nominees for the remixer category and that later expanded to the song and album portion.

Well, I had a problem not only with allowing a select few to have the power to do this but also because the Academy would not tell me who the select few were. Why the secrecy? Over time, I learned who some of that committee were. Some had never produced a track, album or been an artist. How would they even be allowed to vote? It made no sense to me. Then after hearing the tale of another person that tried to get onto the committee but was told they’d never let him in because of his commercial tastes, I was done. I’d have no part of such a nonsense process.

Over the years, I’ve been told it’s not like that but when I ask for the list of names of the committee, the discussion ends. So that’s why I don’t go to LA for the show or the parties. And until they can show me that the system is back to being 100% open to all voters, I have no interest in the process.

But I will say congrats to the winners! This is a year that I believe all were well deserved.

It was also nice to see that they acknowledged Peter Rauhofer on his passing this past year. Usually, the dance guys are overlooked.

As for the show itself, very few oh wow moments. It went on way too long and they only gave away 10 awards on tv. I was 5 for 10 in my picks. One thing I hope they lose for next year is the mashup of artists performing. It’s getting tired. Also, if they could fit it into the 3 hour package they have allotted that would be great. Running 3 hours and 45 minutes is torture. Personally, I did have fun on Facebook with it all as I ran a thread where people could all comment on what they were seeing. Fun stuff.

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it’s time for my new music Pick Hit of the Week. This weeks song comes in from Polydor Records. It’s her 3^rd single of the Halcyon album. Here's the Chainsmokers remix of “Goodness Gracious” by Ellie Goulding and it's my Pick Hit of the Week. Feel free to tell me what you think about the song by leaving a comment in the shownotes on DanceMusicConsultant.com

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And that’s going to do it for this episode of the Dance Music Consultant, I’d like to thank you all for spending some time with me on the show.

If you are listening to this podcast via an mp3 link that I’ve posted on my social media, please feel free to head over to iTunes, Stitcher, Libsyn, Tunein and follow up or subscribe there so you don’t miss a future episode.

If you want to reach me, you can find me at the Dance Music Consultant dot com. You can email me your comments and questions at [e-mail]. You can find the show on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/DanceMusicConsultant and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PodcastDMC

Thank you so much for listening.

Until next time my friends, my name is John Parker and I am your Dance Music Consultant signing off. Have a fantastic week.