Hi! I’m Leonny – writer & editor at IAAS Music. You may have noticed that the last iteration of IAAS Update was handled by Rob, our founder. More on the purpose of these updates can be found there!

In the last month-and-a-half, we’ve put up 17 articles. It is a little less quantity than we started out with – but understandable, looking at our recent growth. As Rob said, we aim to make the quality of each piece high enough to justify your time in reading it!

You may have noticed new series popping up, too. The team has been experimenting with some new formats, all of which I’m glad to say will be staying: the Mixed-Bag Mixtape, in which we draw out submissions we loved but couldn’t quite write a longer piece about; the Regional Showcase, where we go global and handpick indie music by region and genre; and lastly, Misc. Monday, where we write about things that aren’t indie music (shocker!) on the first Monday of each month to let you peek at the people behind the magazine.

Needless to say, I’m suffering from success working to edit and schedule them all. We’ve got lots more on the way for May and June – without naming names to preserve suspense, I can reveal that we’ll be having a pre-release review and interview dropping soon; wrapping up coverage of past events our writers have been at; and of course continuing to deliver reviews to spotlight promising artists. With the range of genres we’re crossing, I guarantee there’ll be something for everyone!

Our key audiences – that’s you – much like our team, are global. Half of our readers are from either the UK or Singapore where our teams are based (25% Singapore, 23% UK). 20% of our readers are American – leaving 32% of our readers across 78 countries. That makes 81 different countries reading our little website!

Who’s on the IAAS Music team?

Last time, Rob introduced three team members: Rob, focusing on articles and indie/rock reviews; Paul, our in-house electronic music expert; and me, Leonny, covering a wide range of artists, genres, and live events from Singapore. You can look forward to live coverage from the UK in the coming months, as the seasons shift and summer festival season opens!

Today, it’s my pleasure to announce two valuable additions to our team: Natalie, primarily focusing on reviews across vastly diverse genres with an analytical eye toward arrangement and theory (her work thus far can be found here); and Lee Shean, our first and only in-house graphic designer. She’s been responsible for all the cute thumbnails you’ve seen in the past two weeks or so – our Instagram (@iaas_music) has never looked sharper! (As you can probably tell, I did this thumbnail myself.)

Keeping up with IAAS Music

We've settled on a consistent posting time of 7:15pm BST, to give our readers keeping up with each piece some evening reading.

And speaking of our Instagram, head on over and drop us a follow! It’s the quickest way to keep up with any new articles we put out as they come, while we get the IAAS Mag email newsletter back up and running; it's currently on hold. We’re working on delivering more content there, especially as we launch IAAS_Tv.

And now you may be asking…

What is IAAS_Tv?

To recap what Rob shared, IAAS_Tv will offer “live video shoots, interviews, structured programs and more – creating another platform to support upcoming artists and make brilliant content.” It’ll be independent from the IAAS Music magazine, but recognisable within the IAAS sphere… and another step forward towards supporting indie artists with promotion.

Lots of work has been going on behind the scenes the past few months! We have two shots in post-production (editing stage), and three others in pre-production – some with upcoming shoot days, and some still in the planning stages on a much larger scale. Our idea is to create a channel continuously producing and releasing various series, highlighting the journey all indie musicians are on.

One thing we do need for IAAS.Tv is more artists! So if you’re interested in putting your latest project in front of a camera and getting high quality video content, please email reviews@iaasmusic.com.

Is IAAS Music making money yet?

I’d love to say we are… unfortunately we aren’t. Rob put in quite a bit of money to set everything up – but we’re hoping to pay our writers (including me!) soon.

IAAS Music has been set up to include multiple revenue streams, from ads for all non-membership paying visitors to merch. Our paid memberships run from an affordable £5/month – less than a cup of coffee, if my memory serves me from when I visited London a few years ago!

Our goal is to generate enough revenue to pay our team, and sustain the website. If you’re here, you’re an early investor – please consider checking out our paid memberships here, or grabbing some merch (here) to wear out at your next indie gig!

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Personally, I joined IAAS Music as a staff writer back in January when the website had just gotten started. I’m very excited to see how it grows, and how we’ll build a community around authentic indie music no matter where we’re all from. It’s easier than ever to access music, and easier than ever to get your own music up – but getting it heard is its own challenge that, as an indie artist myself, I’m intimately familiar with.

With that, we’re wrapping up IAAS Update #02 here. Let us know what you’d like to see more of, or what you’ve been loving so far, in the comments below! If you don’t have an account yet, simply sign up at iaasmusic.com and you’ll be ready to hop into the conversation.

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Contributing reporting added to this update by Rob.