About Us
What is Sound Shelter?
Sound Shelter is the web equivalent of one of those friendly shop workers who shoves a piece of vinyl into your hand and says “Have you heard this? I reckon you’ll love it”.
Who are you?
We're music nerds who've been listening to electronic music for a long time - we DJ, we produce and we go to clubs. We are into all genres of music and we like when we go to clubs and the DJ plays all types of music, in the right order at the right time. We love telling people about the music we find and we hope they love it as much as we do.
We hate when DJ’s keep the names of the tracks they play a secret to gain some kind of recognition for playing a track that they did not even make.
Why did you start this thing?
Sound Shelter started out as a simple way for us to help us find great music that got out of hand.
Hundreds of new tracks are coming out each week and it’s pretty hard to keep on top of it all. We found ourselves getting bored of sorting through the identi-kit rubbish that people are trying to pass off as music.
How does it work?
We’ve given up trying to find the one gem in a thousand on digital stores and are taking things back to our roots. We’ve gone back to trusting the recommendations of carefully selected record shop workers and fellow music lovers.
Our powerful web technology collects recommendations from music lovers all over the world to give you the best new releases across all electronic and soul jazz genres.
We take recommendations from stores in music hot spots such as London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Glasgow and Manchester. We feel these stores have the combined expertise of a variety of genres to ensure that only the best music recommendations come through. By looking through our site you will soon work out who these stores are and we recommend that you buy your music from them.
Alongside the record stores, we take recommendations from the world’s best DJs as well as Sound Shelter users, who are constantly recommending music to each other - read on for more details on this. You can listen to high quality samples and look at the artwork of each release we feature thanks to our partnership with the wonderful Juno Records in the UK.
We update our data every half an hour using some seriously nerdy web technology, so you will always be on top of the best new releases. If you are one of those dedicated people who must know when their favourite artist or label puts out something new, then follow us on Twitter where you will be notified of new releases as soon as we find them.
How do I get my or my labels music on Sound Shelter?
Put out good music and we will find you.
Oh and you must put your music out on a physical format - either vinyl or CD is good. While there are some quality digital only labels out there, we think that the best music is still being released on formats that won’t disappear when your laptop crashes. We also like record sleeves and how vinyl makes us feel.
Can I download music from Sound Shelter?
No. We recommend that you buy the music we feature at the record shops we link to on our site.
What are the benefits of a user account?
Creating a free user account will give you two main benefits:
a) You will be able to recommend music to other users, meaning the producers and labels get the love they deserve. After all, they are the ones that are making people move their feet, hug their mate and/or get sweaty.
b) You will get personalised recommendations. Everytime you recommend a release or follow an artist, label or DJ we make a note of this. Once you’ve done this a few times we can work out what we think you will like and let you know about it. Just click on ‘Personalised Recommendations’ to see your hand/computer picked releases.
Every so often we will send you an email full of details on music we think you will like. Don’t worry, we hate spam as much as you do.
I found a release I like, what next?
Recommend it!
Just click Recommend This and your recommendation will be shown to the world and be used to calculate our top releases. You’ll then see your name appearing alongside some of the best tastemakers on the planet; this is a good feeling.
If you want to buy the release from Juno then click the Add To Basket link and it will automatically be added to your Juno basket, ready for you to buy. If you want to buy from another record shop we feature, just click on their logo and you’ll be taken to their site to buy it.
I want to talk to you guys, how can I get in touch?
Just send us an email to info@soundshelter.co.uk , twitter.com/soundshelter or add us on Facebook at facebook.com/soundshelter
We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas. Our site is far from being finished and we are always looking for people to work with us so if you feel you have something to offer then get in touch with your idea. We love hearing new and wonderful music so feel free to send it to us at the above email address.
http://www.soundshelter.net
http://www.facebook.com/soundshelter
http://www.twitter.com/soundshelter
info@soundshelter.co.uk