Brand sponsorship of the Surface Unsigned Festival is being sought on a national and soon to be international scale. The Surface Unsigned Festival is the only national live music event that brings unsigned bands and artists to the attention of all aspects of the music industry.

In 2008, events will be held in the north (Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds), the Midlands (Birmingham, Wolverhampton) and the south (London, Southampton, Brighton), making it the biggest event of its kind. The 2008 events will involve over 200 nights of live music, attended by 3,000 musicians from across the UK and approximately 40,000 fans.

Industry guests so far have included BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio WM, Alan McGee Management, Surface Management, Dirty Pretty Things, Kerrang Radio, Flat Cap Promotions, Equator Music, XFM Radio, The Fly, NME, The Great Escape Festival, MAS Records (Robert Plant) and more individual A & R people. The organisers are currently in the process of speaking with various production companies with a view to taking the Festival into a televised reality TV format.

In 2009, events will be held in Scotland (Glasgow), the north (Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds), the Midlands (Birmingham, Wolverhampton), the south (London, Southampton, Brighton) and the Wales/Avon region (Cardiff, Bristol).

The website is currently receiving an average of 547,000 hits per month; this figure is forecast to triple to 1,500,000 website hits per month by March 2009. In 2009, there will be over 450 nights of live music, with 6,250 musicians involved and an estimated 65,000 fans experiencing the events.

The Festival's magazine, The Surface Unsigned Magazine, is the most effective way of communicating with unsigned bands and musicians in the UK. With the number of unsigned musicians growing, the UK sees a record amount of recording and rehearsal complexes in all areas of the country. 15,000 copies are distributed as a free magazine to all rehearsal and recording complexes throughout the UK on an annual basis in October of every year.

The magazine will be handed out to visitors to Music Live, which boasts a position as the biggest music event in Europe (7th-9th November, 2008). Last year Music Live attracted some 23,000 visitors. The Surface Unsigned Magazine is handed out at every event of the Surface Unsigned Festival. The 2008 Surface Unsigned Festival will see a total of 210 nights of live unsigned music in London, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, involving over 3,000 musicians and over 40,000 fans of unsigned music; in 2009 the Festival will be expanding to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Brighton and London, involving over 6,000 musicians and over 65,000 fans of unsigned music.

Around 10,000 copies of the magazine are expected to be taken home from the Festival, with a further 5,000 copies distributed to local music shops, universities, schools/colleges, other music-related businesses and bars/pubs/cafes/music venues in areas surrounding the Surface Unsigned Festival.

Contact: Jay Mitchell

More information ...