2003

[31-Dec-2003] TOUCAN MUSIC CHANGE COMPLETE
Eagle-eyed visitors may have noticed changes have been happening at our Vitaminic and Soundclick pages over the Christmas period. Frantik Music ceased to exist on the Vitaminic site on 28th December, when the name was changed to Toucan Music, and individual artist pages have also been updated to reflect the name change. The changeover is now basically complete, although a few instances of the Frantik name still exist on the web, which will gradually change over the coming months. The URL frantikmusic.co.uk will continue to work until the Spring, giving casual visitors time to bookmark the new site.

[01-Nov-2003] NEW NAME ANNOUNCED
Frantik Music's name will change on 1st January 2004 to... Toucan Music! The new name was chosen by Andrew Amery, a.k.a. Redmann, earlier this year. The name change story began at the beginning of 2003 when it was announced (after a couple of years of debate!) that the name would be changing at the end of the year. We wanted a name which 1. wasn't used by anyone else, 2. was spelled correctly (in the mid 1990's when the Frantik name was first used, it was cool to spell things badly) and 3. could be used for a wide variety of music styles. The domain name toucanmusic.com has been bought and should be up and running by the end of the year - but the frantikmusic.co.uk address will still be available until next year.

[22-Oct-2003] REDMANN HITS TOP SPOT ON SOUNDCLICK'S MELLOW ELECTRONICA CHART
Our latest Soundclick promotion has been a success with Redmann's 'Embrace' reaching #1 on the Soundclick Electronica : Mellow subgenre chart on Monday 20th October 2003. At the time of writing on Wednesday 22nd, 'Embrace' is still top of the chart.

[18-Oct-2003] REDMANN AND PP TRACKS TO FEATURE ON SOUNDCLICK
Redmann's 'Embrace' will be the featured track of the day on Soundclick's Electronica section tomorrow (Sunday 19th October). PP's 'Travels in the North' will follow next week on Sunday 26th October. This is the first major promotion since Frantik's Soundclick promotion trial in April.

[18-Oct-2003] DJ RISE AND PP FEATURED ON VITAMINIC'S NOKIA MICRO SITE
DJ Rise's popular dance track 'Insane' and PP's chillout track 'Night Beach' have both been featured by Vitaminic's micro site advertising the new Nokia phone over the summer. The tracks were among several selected by Vitaminic out of the thousands on the site to feature in the promotion.
The site is here http://www.vitaminic.com/vita/mobilemusic/home.jsp and the chillout page where 'Night Beach' is featured is here http://www.vitaminic.com/vita/mobilemusic/chileclectic1.jsp. The increased promotion led 'Night Beach' to the top of the Vitaminic chillout chart again on 29th September, over a year after it first reached the same spot.

[18-Aug-2003] NAME CHANGE SUGGESTIONS
Some of the suggestions received for the new name of Frantik Music include: Oxygen, Sketched, Toucan Music, Stagbeetle, Whirlwind Music, Upside, Aardvark, Pluto, Opus, Noted Music and Fusion. Keep your suggestions coming in, the final decision will be made in the next few months and the name change will hopefully go live on 1 January.

[18-Aug-2003] PP TRACKS USED IN VIDEO
Two PP tracks including the recent 'Outer Self' have been used in a new 2aT production, 'Fluid Dynamics'. The video features Team Slug on a tour of the globe searching for any whitewater they can find, and is now available from www.2aT.co.uk

[04-Aug-2003] EXCELSIOR IS MARRIED!
Congratulations to Kristian Davies, aka Excelsior, and his bride to be, Catrin, who were married in Carmarthen on August 1st. After the honeymoon, Kristian and Catrin are hoping to move into their new house in Ferryside which they have recently spent time doing up. I am sure everyone will join us in wishing them all the best for the future... and hopefully we'll hear more music from Kristian when he's settled into his new home!

[06-Jul-2003 ] CHARTS UPDATE
Frantik tracks have started to regularly scrape the lower end of the Soundclick genre charts, with our performance on Soundclick getting better all the time since our promotions in May. Redmann's 'Scratching The Surface' (Dave Kent edit) was at 32 in the house chart today, Excelsior's 'Tranquillity Rising' (PP remix) was at 37 in the mellow electronica chart, and PP's 'Outer Self' at 82 in the drum & bass chart. We're hoping to run some more promotions on Soundclick later this summer so with luck our chart positions will continue to rise... talking of Rise, 'Insane' also reached no. 38 in the Soundclick trance chart last month.
Meanwhile, on Vitaminic, Dreamworld's remastered 'Flying' (remix) and 'Voyage to Pluto' (return trip) have consistently grabbed the top two places in the happycore chart since they were uploaded in April. 'Liquid Nitrogen' is also currently in the Vitaminic breakbeat chart.

[05-Jul-2003] NEW COMPILATION NOW AVAILABLE
The new compilation album is now available, featuring 13 tracks including some of the biggest current tunes from our artists such as the PP remix of 'Embrace', 'Insane' by DJ Rise and Space Invaderz 'Music Is The Key'. The album also features exclusive previously unheard material from Space Invaderz, Dreamworld, Marc Burt, Redmann and more. It's called www.frantikmusic.co.uk/2003and if you go to the title web address, you can find out more about the album!

[07-Jun-2003] MAY MOST SUCCESSFUL MONTH
Thanks to everyone who visited the Frantik website during May, making it the most successful month ever since the site began way back in 1997. This site is often overshadowed by our prescence on the MP3 sites such as Vitaminic, but the new design has obviously attracted more visitors!

[19-May-2003] FRANTIK JOINS DANCE INDUSTRIES
Frantik Music have begun promoting music on the new Dance Industries website at www.dance-industries.com. Dance Industries offer free MP3 dance music on 192kbit MP3 rather than the standard 128kbit MP3 format on most other sites. To those of you not familiar with the jargon, this is a higher quality of MP3 file which takes up greater disk space, therefore takes longer to upload / download.
The first track to be uploaded to Dance Industries was the PP remix of 'Fire and Ice' by Excelsior. More tracks will follow shortly, with links on our Free MP3 page, although it is currently planned to keep the number of tracks on this site to a minimum until we know how successful the site proves.

[19-May-2003] FRANTIK LEAVES MP3.COM AND JAVAMUSIC
After three and a half years, we've closed down all but one of our MP3.com artist sites. The PP, Dark Brigade and Other Artist (Redmann, Excelsior, Dave Kent etc.) pages were removed on 18th May, and today all Dreamworld material except 'Reaction One (remix edit)' and 'Losing Control' was removed. With the Hyperterminal and Silverknight pages having been removed on 31st January, this means the two Dreamworld tracks are now the only Frantik MP3s left on MP3.com.
The decision was taken for two reasons - firstly MP3.com's statistics have always left a lot to be desired compared with other sites, without providing a total for individual tracks, and since late 2001 they have no longer provided totals of downloads as well as plays. MP3.com has now become a subsciption based site, and allows non-payment artists just three tracks online at any one time. When you can promote limitless tracks for free on Vitaminic and Soundclick with better statistics reporting, payment of the subscription was never an issue, especially considering the number of artists Frantik now promotes.
The Javamusic site was relaunched earlier this year and now also promotes a subscription based service. During the relaunch, all the music we had uploaded over the past year had been deleted, and it has been decided not to continue using this site.
It also appears that the StationMP3.com website, on which several key Frantik tracks were being promoted, has been closed. More information shortly!

[12-May-2003] DJ RISE JOINS FRANTIK
A very warm welcome to newcomer DJ Rise, aka Ryan Anthony, who joins Frantik Music this month with his latest (and already very successful) track 'Insane', featuring vocals from his talented vocalist LyDia. 'Insane' has already featured on Sky TV's Channel 223 in a promotion for PS2 game 'Shinobi' and received praise from artists such as Ian Van Dahl and Rich Hikins - and now it's online and free to download with Frantik! Rise is also an impressive DJ, with both club and radio experience, having organised nights for Music Live (in association with the BBC) and run his own radio station Dance Frequency. Find out more about him at his Klub DJ site www.klubdj.com/rise

[11-May-2003] NEW CHARTS ADDED TO STATISTICS PAGE
Two new charts have been added to the statistics page of this site. There's now a chart showing the most played tracks of each year, and also a percentage chart which lists the tracks which have the highest number of previews converted into downloads. The 'most played' chart gives you an idea of which tunes had the most exposure / attention during a year, while the 'percentage' chart is the most accurate way of showing how popular a tune is during a particular year. The top downloads and listener's chart are still listed.

[04-May-2003] FRANTIK TRACKS IN SOUNDCLICK AND VITAMINIC CHARTS
Redmann and PP have both seen results after our Sounclick promotion trial. Redmann's 'Scratching The Surface' (Dave Kent & PP remix edit) jumped up to number 3 in the House chart by May 4th - the highest any Frantik artist has been on Soundclick. The track also scraped into the Top 40 Electronica overall chart (which incorporates all forms of dance music). PP's 'Liquid Nitrogen' is also currently at number 24 in the Soundclick breakbeat chart.
As well as making inroads on Soundclick, Frantik artists have been topping the Vitaminic charts again with 'Liquid Nitrogen' topping the Breakbeat chart, Space Invaderz's 'Science Fiction' topping the Hard House / Progressive chart and Dave Kent's 'Phenomenon' at number 2 in the Disco House chart on May 3rd.

[23-Apr-2003] REMASTERED DREAMWORLD TRACKS ONLINE
Remastered versions of popular Dreamworld tracks 'Your Smile' and 'Voyage To Pluto' have hit the Vitaminic site. The remastered tracks actually replace the originals, which were mastered to MP3 in early 2000. The mixes are identical, but better mastering and MP3 authoring software means a higher quality sound to the remastered track.
The 2000 masters will be taken off MP3.com later this year and the Dreamworld MP3.com site will close, bringing an end to Frantik's MP3.com presence after over three years. Remastered versions of the remaining tracks, which have never featured on Vitaminic before, will be added in stages throughout 2003, with a compilation CD hopefully becoming available by the end of the year.

[23-Apr-2003] DREAMWORLD NOW ON SOUNDCLICK
The music of Dreamworld is now available on the new Dreamworld Soundclick page, with the first track 'Voyage To Pluto' free to download. Further tracks will be uploaded shortly.

[20-Apr-2003] SOUNDCLICK PROMOTION TRIAL
Two artists are trialling new promotion methods on the Soundclick site in the coming weeks. On Saturday 26th April, PP's track 'Liquid Nitrogen' will be promoted on the front page of the Soundclick Electronica charts throughout the day. The following Saturday, 3rd May, will see the remix of Redmann's 'Scratching The Surface' promoted on the front page of the whole Soundclick site. If the promotions are a success, more could follow during the summer.
The idea behind the promotions is not just to get lots of listeners for the two tracks, but also to bring visitors to the Soundclick artists sites. Traditionally, Frantik artists have always received more listeners on Vitaminic than Soundclick, so we think it's time that Soundclick music fans sat up and took notice!

[20-Apr-2003] REMIX OF EXCELSIOR'S 'FIRE AND ICE'
Excelsior's chillout track 'Fire and Ice' has been remixed by PP, also in a chillout style. The remix features a new drum section as well as adding more strings, but keeping the recognisable lead piano line. It's available to download here.

[20-Apr-2003] DAVE KENT & PP REMIX 'SCRATCHING THE SURFACE'
Redmann's latest track has had the remix treatment from Dave Kent and PP, and is now available online here. The remix makes the most of the trademark Redmann vocoded vocals, blending in strings, pianos, funky bass and snippets of breakbeat. An edited version and a full DJ friendly mix are available. Dave will be hoping this new remix follows the success of his remix of 'So Sublime'.

[13-Apr-2003] NEW WEBSITE DESIGN
The Frantik website has had a complete redesign, for the first time in 3 years! As well as being more colourful, hopefully it's easier to navigate. This news page now features all the latest news on one screen, so you don't need to visit lots of individual pages to view the news. The latest updates will always feature at the top of the screen.
Signed artists Hyperterminal and Silverknight have been removed from the site as all their free MP3 tracks have been removed. Don't panic as there's still loads of great music to download from our other artists.

[09-Mar-2003] NAME CHANGE UPDATE
Frantik Music is here to stay, at least for the time being. The plan to change the name of the site has been postponed, and a new site design is on the way to keep us going into 2004. After investigating the name 'Eclipse Music', which was one of the best suggestions, and discovering all the domain names for 'Eclipse' have already been taken, the name change has been shelved until our subscription to FrantikMusic.co.uk is up for renewal in 2004. Suggestions are still welcome!