[12 Jun 2020]

Jacaranda Records’ steady assault on the immersive audio market is poised to change gears, with a slew of announcements slated for coming weeks as the format’s steady progression accelerates.

For over a year, the label has been leading the independent record labels’ charge on 3D audio, mixing every one of our releases in Dolby Atmos format – as well as a number of spatial surround R&D productions, making the Atmos mixes available for sale to the public via our unique b2c platform developed in partnership with Amplifyd. 

Now, with a raft of high profile partnerships and contracts ready to be announced over the course of the summer, the consistent and sustained work of our label team, engineers and in-house immersive mix room is about to bear fruit.

Even before completing construction of the UK’s first purpose-built Immersive & 3D Audio Studio in the heart of Liverpool – the UK’s Music City – to support the burgeoning market created by the latest Amazon & Apple devices, Jacaranda Records has been openly championing the fast-spreading audio format, predicting a pipeline of audio production work in soundtrack design and pioneering front line music.

We weren’t wrong.

Today, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, our custom-built facility for spatial music mixing & immersive storytelling is busier than ever. A preemptive move to close the facility to all but our lead in-house engineer before the official lockdown began has enabled us to remain operational throughout, and while the rest of the UK’s studio sector is still applauding itself for grinding into action last week, for the Jacaranda Studio it’s been business as usual.

That’s why when much of the industry has been in confused stasis – taken aback by the tectonic shifts in economics, we’ve continued to work with our artists SPILT, Aimée Steven and Shards; sustained support for the wider music community by working with Liverpool jazz orchestra Out Of The Blue and the Save our Venues campaign; consolidated our position as the first independent label to support the release of immersive frontline music; and completed the groundwork for the raft of innovative commercial partnerships and projects to be revealed this summer.

Jacaranda Records’ Capomaestro Ray Mia said: “When we launched the studio and our commitment to being an immersive-first label we were met with support from some corners of the music community, but to be honest – blank-eyed bemusement from the rest, as individuals, as a team and as a label we’ve never flinched in our belief that immersive audio represents a sea change in music production and consumption, this represents a moment which will match the mono/stereo transition in music history. In years to come, people will think of stereo as we think of mono today… quaint.

“Not everyone has understood what we were saying, and I’m sure many have never believed it, but that’s cool. We’ll keep saying it until everyone else catches up, or pretends that they’ve been saying it all along, or even appropriate what we’ve been saying since before I set up the Label! We believe in showing and not telling, and over the next few weeks we’re finally in a position to reveal what we’ve been doing, who we’ve been doing it with, and what it can mean to our city, our artists and our business. I set up the Label to pioneer this work, I only want to work with artists that embrace this philosophy. In the last year alone we’ve produced fifty-three (5 – 3) frontline Atmos-First tracks.”