On to the next chapter!

So our office got robbed, a few weeks ago. Without us being insured for theft. I’ve been explaining the whole situation for weeks on a daily basis and still have to. Quite frankly I think it’s been enough. But, I can’t close the topic just yet, not without writing this blog post and reminiscing all the support we got. From you, the listeners, our partners, labels, artists, press and others. It’s been crazy. And it’s been amazing to feel so much love for a music discovery service we started 3,5 years ago.

On the day of the robbery itself we received tons of support mails, tweets and Facebook posts. Lots of people wanted to help out. A sudden crowd funding initiative was founded by some of our listeners, several people deposited € 22,- (or more) on our bank account and the press was all over it that day. We immediately thanked everyone coming into action but stressed that we wanted to organize something ourselves, without ‘begging’ to help us out. We wanted to celebrate the fact that we’re still here. With music. And so we did.

Thursday the 9th of May we organized ’22tracks & Friends’ at Bitterzoet in Amsterdam, to celebrate the fact that this shit didn’t bring us down. That we’re still here. Together with our friends Saux, MPS Pilot, Jungle by Night, Spacegirls, Waxfiend, Man!e, Snelle Jelle, Brutuzz, Full Crate, FS Green, Flexican, Sef, Henzel & Disco Nova and The Party Squad we celebrated like there was no tomorrow (apparently morning did come, together with a cruel hangover). Guests could either buy a ticket or buy a limited T-shirt with entrance fee included at the door. All the income gathered that night was donated to 22tracks. Bringing it to a total sum of more than € 3.500,-! Crazy! And although this doesn’t cover the robbery loss, we are happy we did it this way and wouldn’t have done it in any other way.

Besides the Bitterzoet and all the above mentioned artists lots of companies helped us out that night (and the days before). The guys from E&I produced the event, Tjunk printed limited Tshirts that we sold at the door, Firma Daan&Laan captured it all on video (soon online), Streamzilla offered us unlimited traffic for our live stream, Streamnerd produced the live stream, Ali Mousavi and Dennis Veldman made some wonderful photo’s that night (see here and here). All without any costs involved. Thank you all so much!

Now. Let’s close this chapter and move on. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Enjoy new music!

-Gilles

22tracks & Friends

Two weeks ago 22tracks HQ was in shock. Our office got robbed and the burglars stole all our computers, screens, beamer, turntables and more. Damage: €20.000+. The most painful part: it appeared that we weren’t insured for theft. Oops.

Gladly our music and website are hosted outside of the office, so the 22tracks service itself is perfectly safe. Afterwards, we’ve received hundreds (if not thousands) of support tweets, comments, emails, phone calls and visits. Artists, record labels, friends and of course our backbone: the listeners!

We decided to turn this all into something positive: a unique 22tracks & Friends night at the Bitterzoet (Amsterdam) on Thursday, May 9th. To celebrate the fact that we’re still here (stronger than ever) to provide you new music, the easy way! The entrance that night is €5,- (or more, up to you). We will also sell tshirts with the entrance fee included.

If you’re living too far away or won’t be able to make it: we’re building a small donation platform where your possible support can help us back on our feet even faster.

Thank you all so much!
The 22tracks Crew

Lineup: To be announced
Door: €5,- (or more, up to you)

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…

English:
Two nights ago, in the night of Wednesday the 17th of April, one of the most shocking events in the history of 22tracks took place. Our office got robbed and the burglars stole approximately 25.000 euros worth of hardware; computers and such. Of course this is quite a shock to all of us, the listeners and the team, and we have temporarily stopped updating for security reasons. Now, after a good night sleep, we’re back on track and our service is running as normal again: genres are being updated again and for you, the listener, nothing has changed.

Besides the financial impact these events have had, we won’t let them bring us down. On the contrary. We will change the situation into something positive. We’re now working on the best way to do this and we’re sure it’s going to be as you’d expect from us: all about the love for music. We want to explicitly thank everyone for the support we’ve had in the past twenty four hours and we hope to be able to unite all the supporters soon in a way that fits us all. To be continued…

French:
Durant la nuit du 17 Avril dernier, notre siège à Amsterdam a subi un cambriolage. Ce fût l’un des événements les plus choquants de l’histoire de 22tracks. Les cambrioleurs ont dérobé ordinateurs et biens matériels d’une valeur d’environ 25000 euros. Naturellement ce fût un choc pour nous tous, les auditeurs et l’équipe, et nous avions temporairement suspendu les mises à jour pour des raisons de sécurité. Après une bonne nuit de sommeil, nous sommes désormais à nouveau sur pied, notre service a repris son fonctionnement normal : les genres sont mis à jour et pour vous les auditeurs, rien n’a changé.

Malgré l’impact financier que cet événement implique, nous ne nous laisserons pas abattre. Au contraire, nous allons transformer cette situation en quelque chose de positif. Pour ce faire, nous travaillons actuellement à rechercher la meilleure façon, et nous sommes certains que cela va se faire autour de la musique, comme vous pourriez attendre de nous. Nous tenons à faire part de notre profonde gratitude, à tous ceux qui nous ont soutenu durant ces 24 heures passées, et espérons pouvoir vous réunir tous de la façon qui nous convient le mieux. A suivre …

New music ‘rewarding for the brain’

A study, which is published in the journal Science, suggests that listening to new music is rewarding for the brain.  Because our goal is to bring you “New music, the easy way,” we had to mention this:

“Using MRI scans, a Canadian team of scientists found that areas in the reward centre of the brain became active when people heard a song for the first time. The more the listener enjoyed what they were hearing, the stronger the connections were in the region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.” [...] “By analysing the scans, the scientists found that the nucleus accumbens was “lighting up” and depending on the level of activity, the researchers could predict whether the participant was likely to buy a song. The researchers found that the nucleus accumbens was also interacting with another region of the brain called the auditory cortical stores. This is an area that stores sound information based on music that people have been exposed to before.”

(Rebecca Morelle, BBC)

22tracks Paris party recap

On March 22nd 2013, 22tracks celebrated an international hat-trick. 22London was celebrating its first anniversary while 22Brussels and 22Paris simply celebrated the success of quality music curation with 22tracks’ biggest fans. For their party, the Paris team had chosen La Rotonde, an exceptional and historical location situated in the fast evolving area of Stalingrad just off the canal de la Villette. The result was an all night long party with the grand majority of the Paris DJs and curators on three different dance floors!

Party Recap 22tracks Brussels

Watch the video report Tvbrussel did (in Dutch) about our party in Brussels last Friday.

How to submit a track

Lately we’ve had many questions from (upcoming) artists, mainly they ask us how to submit a track to 22tracks. If you want to submit a track we prefer links to properly tagged (320 kbps) mp3 files, emailed to:

info[at]22tracks.com

Please clearly specify your genre in the subject of the email. Note that we cannot respond to emails about whether tracks arrived. Note, also, that we can’t promise you that you will be featured on 22tracks, because it’s up to our DJ’s to select 5 new tracks every week.

(Dutch) Stage: Marketing & Communicatie

22tracks is per direct op zoek naar stagiair Marketing & Communicatie (Social Media). Wij zoeken een teamspeler die zelfstandig te werk kan gaan, met de drang om zichzelf verder te ontwikkelen, iemand die wil groeien en leren binnen ons bedrijf. Het werk dat je oplevert wordt door veel mensen bekeken (en beluisterd). We verwachten daarom een precieze instelling met oog voor netheid in je werk. Lees de volledige PDF stage omschrijving hier.

Deze vacature is vervuld.

22tracks × FONK × Philips

22tracks and FONK are working together with Philips Public Signage Solutions to deliver you the jukebox of the future. This video was shot at the Integrated Systems Europe 2013 expo in the RAI / Amsterdam.

‘Taking over the world 22tracks at a time’

Join us on our journey to Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris inside this wonderful short 22tracks documentary by Firestarters: “Taking over the world 22tracks at a time”. Shot and directed by Opslaan Als.

Great timing in anticipation of our 3rd anniversary! Come celebrate with us Sunday the 21st at the North Sea Jazz Club (Don’t forget to RSVP).