Abbey Road Institute and Spinnup launch partnership

A Global Partnership

Earlier this year we launched our partnership with Spinnup, Universal Music’s own digital distribution platform. Spinnup provides artists with a means to stream and sell their music on the world’s biggest DSPs such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, the list goes on. The digital platform gives access to a range of useful data that helps artists to gain an in-depth understanding of their audience and how their music is being consumed, whilst paying out 100% of their royalties. This collaboration is particularly special, not only because it comes from within our bigger Universal Music family, but it also represents an opportunity for students to continue to develop their artistic career both during and after their studies.

Spinnup UK’s Tristan Whitlam gave his thoughts on what it means to work with us “We are proud to be partners with Abbey Road Institute and have the opportunity to work with some of the best emerging studio and production talent in the world! From speaking to students via our distribution masterclasses, and the Spinnup artist / Abbey Road Institute students mixer, we are already seeing an excellent quality of tracks being released through Spinnup from the students and their collaborations, with the A&R team at Universal always keeping an eye out for that next big track.”

Luca Barassi, Abbey Road Institute CEO shared his perspective, ‘We are always looking to offer great opportunities to our students and graduates, the partnership with Spinnup aims at providing them with a simple and effective platform to make their music ready to be heard. But, being part of the same extended family (UMG), this partnership with Spinnup brings much more than that: from networking with other artists and industry reps via the “speed-dating” meet-ups to getting the opportunity to become ambassadors for the Spinnup platform therefore getting an “insider’s view” of the music industry and possibly a foot in the door’.

Producer-Artist Speed-Dating

To celebrate the partnership we embarked on the first ‘speed-dating’ session where our students headed to Universal Music’s London HQ to meet some of Spinnup’s hottest emerging acts. Twenty of our student producers and twenty artists, handpicked by Spinnup, were divided into two groups. They then moved around the room for five minutes slots to allow our students to meet with a handful of the artists to get to know them.

We had a chat with one of our students, Giacomo Vianello following the event to find out what that experience offered:  ‘it was awesome to be able to visit Universal for the event, you really feel a part of something global. We ended up getting to know about five separate artists in the ‘speed dating’. I got to know a lot about them in a short period of time. Afterwards, we had a longer period to go back to the artists we spoke with and make more concrete plans.’

Spinnup’s Harrison Seward said ‘The speed-dating event went really well. It was great to put together students from Abbey Road Institute with artists on Spinnup, and everyone seemed to find it a really good exercise. The feedback from the artists was great, and I heard that some artists have booked studio time in with some of the students off the back of it, which is really encouraging and exactly what we wanted to facilitate.’

The Music Of Tomorrow

Giacomo left the event with a session for the future planned. ‘One act I met was called Dream Park. They are made up of a couple from Israel. They perform what they like to call ‘nostalgic pop’. It was exciting to meet a promising act and I made plans to record them at Abbey Road Institute. I have a lot of projects that I’m working on that will be great to upload to Spinnup. I’m recording an EP for one of my colleagues Johnny Jacobsen and an album for an artist named Ben Cipolla that will be interesting because we are going to record a string quartet.

With over 60 Spinnup artists already signed to Universal Music since their launch, there’s lots of potential both for our students and the artists they’re working with. We can’t wait to see the collaborations that take place as the partnership grows. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for our student and alumni music released on Spinnup.

Would you like to participate in events like this? Find out how to apply to our Advanced Diploma course HERE