Industry news & advice blog

Give your music career the boost it deserves! The Unsigned Guide was created over 10 years ago with the premise of taking the legwork out of navigating the winding, occasionally dimly light, roads of the music industry. We believe your time can be better spent making music, rather than trawling the internet for information about the music business and useful contacts to help you out. So without further ado, let us show you the various features of The Unsigned Guide’s service, how it will benefit you and why thousands of other bands and artists are already using it!
 

THE UNSIGNED GUIDE MUSIC INDUSTRY DIRECTORY
Boasting more than 8,700 UK music industry contacts, our online directory has everything covered from promoter, venue and festival bookers, artist managers, record labels and A&R contacts to music publishers, press & PR companies, distributors, music producers and booking agents. 

If you are actively releasing and promoting your own music, you will also find details for radio station DJs & producers that work on shows playing emerging music, new music blogs, regional music press, fanzine and website editors, merchandise companies, music photographers and video production companies. 

If you’re working on new material, our lists of recording studios, rehearsal rooms, mastering and duplication companies, designers and printers are bound to help you find the right service for you.

More than just lists of names & numbers, we get in touch with all the contacts included in The Unsigned Guide to ask what genres they specialise in, how they prefer to receive demos, who they’ve previously worked with and the like, so each listing in the directory has an accompanying paragraph of detailed information about that particular company to help you define how they can be of service to you.

Our online directory has a number of search filters to help save time whilst you are browsing. So you’ll be able to search specifically for certain music genres, venue capacities, or contacts in particular cities or regions of the UK.

It is a full time job keeping the directory up to date, but rest assured the information in The Unsigned Guide is not just left to stagnate. We work through batches of the 50 sections included in the directory to confirm details are up to date with the companies themselves and are constantly on the look out for fresh content to include as well so the number of music industry contacts just keeps on growing over time. We also encourage our members to feed back to us if they find something out of date or hear of a company that we do not have listed so we can get straight onto it!

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SPOTLIGHT NEW MUSIC BLOG
One of our most popular features is the monthly Spotlight blog where we champion 5 stand-out tracks submitted by Unsigned Guide members. 

We’re fortunate to receive some really high quality music from our members and as such, we’ve been among the first to tip some fine artists and bands via our Spotlight blog who have gone onto greater things. Acts such as BLESSA, Spectral Park, Letters To Fiesta, Sea Pinks, Temple Songs, Harry David and more, were all championed by us early on and have since been written about by the likes of NME, Q Magazine, The Fly, The Guardian, received airplay on BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Amazing Radio, XFM and others, plus have secured representation from artist managers, PR companies & pluggers, music publishers and record labels. We’re extremely pleased to have helped them along their journey to date.

The artists featured in our Spotlight blog also have their selected track sent onto a group of about 40 music industry professionals who guarantee to listen (check out which music industry folks are on the list here), as well as having their song passed onto Roundhouse Radio, Reform Radio and Twisted Mixtape for airplay consideration.

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LEARNING HOW THE UK MUSIC INDUSTRY WORKS
Let’s face it…the inner workings of the music business aren’t the simplest thing to grasp! That’s where we can help you again. Our online service contains an Advice hub where we’ve gathered essential info to answer your questions covering everything from ‘How do I set up my own label?’, ‘Should I join PRS For Music?’,  ‘How do I get funding to take my band overseas?’.  

We also have guidance and advice from the experts including Musicians’ Union, IFPI, BBC Introducing, Music Producers Guild and loads more.

We also regularly post music industry news, informative blogs and produce a weekly newsletter, free to all - not just our members, to help you keep abreast of music business developments that affect you as an emerging artist, plus opportunities for the likes of music funding, free networking events and slots to play at festivals or music industry events. 

SAVE MONEY ON MUSIC SERVICES
Most musicians we know don’t typically have money to waste, so we’ve devised a way for our members to save money on essential music services. As a member of The Unsigned Guide, you will be able to take advantage of exclusive discounts, deals and savings on everything from merchandise and printing, photography and video services, to booking recording and rehearsal time. We’ve worked in conjunction with over 140 various companies and individuals listed in The Unsigned Guide directory to bring you these marvellous discounts. Once logged into the Guide, just search our Deals & Discounts to bring up the best savings to be had!

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TOOLS TO ORGANISE YOUR MUSIC PROJECTS
Whether you’re planning a release, a tour or some form of promotional campaign, The Unsigned Guide will not only provide you with the music contacts you need, but also the tools to make your plans a reality. As you’re sourcing important and interesting contacts from the Guide, save them as favourites and organise into project folders to easily refer back to what you need. You can also favourite relevant blogs or news items that may be useful to your music project.

SUPPORTED BY THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
The Unsigned Guide is very pleased to have garnered the support and backing from many respected music organisations over the years including Musicians’ Union, PRS For Music, Association of Independent Music, Music Producers Guild and many more, plus other prominent music businesses and services such as Dawsons Music, SoundCloud, Youth Music and Midem. You can take a look at some of their recommendations of our service here.
 

CHEAP, FLEXIBLE MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS 
We offer cheap monthly, quarterly and annual membership to The Unsigned Guide to provide you with a choice. All subscriptions are recurring payments, but there is no tie-in so you can cancel at any time, just let us know and we can do it on your behalf or tell you how to action this. We try to make things flexible and affordable as we know musicians require both!

Head to our SIGN UP PAGE and join the many artists, bands, aspiring producers, artist managers, music students and independent music businesses that are already using The Unsigned Guide day to day.