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I've been following Charlotte Campbell for a while now. I met her last summer when she was taking part in the Mayor Of London Gigs competition, and since then she seems to have gone from strength to strength. After winning a scholarship at the institute of contemporary music through the competition, she released her brilliant EP, Stay, on iTunes, and performed at various different events, from Busking Before The BRITS at the O2 to the recent St George's Day weekend celebrations.
Charlotte's style is essentially a beautiful folk/pop/acoustic sound that's very pleasing on the ear. It's always wonderful to watch her perform, as it's plain to see just how much she enjoys it; as a fellow performer, this is something I can very much identify with. Rather than just attempt to describe her to you though, I think it's best I show you - here's the video for Charlotte's song "Quiet Nights".
She's even in the running to support Gabrielle Aplin on the London date of her tour!
A few months back, Charlotte decided to make her debut album, completely independently. As you can imagine, she's built up quite a dedicated fanbase by now, and it was this fanbase that has helped make this album, Blue Eyed Soul, a reality. She set up a Pledge campaign with PledgeMusic, a site that helps artists make and release their material, with help from their fans. So for example, in Charlotte's case, you could pre-order the album through the site, either as a download, or a hard copy, and the money from that would help fund what was needed for the release.
Obviously, pre-orders alone are unlikely to fund all the equipment required to properly record an album, even doing so at home, so she also offered various different extra things that you could get if you pledged a bit more money towards the release - from behind the scenes extras, hard copies of Stay, hard copies of the album itself, signed copies, t-shirts, house shows, songwriting sessions - the the list goes on...!
And this is all before the album actually gets released on iTunes! All these exclusives - just for pledgers!
Charlotte's pledge campaign took off in a way she never could have expected. In the run up to the album's release through PledgeMusic, she received 127 various different pledges, and reached 772% of her original target, in terms of how much she'd need to make the album. This has meant she's been able to afford to not only complete the album to an even better standard, but also offer some of the other extras through her pledge campaign, and who knows what else? A little tour, perhaps? ;)
Charlotte's story so far is a brilliant one, and hopefully we'll hear even more from her as time goes on.
I highly recommend you check her out on the various sites available (which I have listed below), and if you ever happen to pass by her on the Southbank, say hello - I'm sure she'll appreciate it :)
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Here are some relevant links to do with Charlotte:
"Like" her on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/charlottecampbellmusic
Follow Charlotte on twitter: https://twitter.com/Ccampbellmusic
Her website: charlottecampbell.co.uk
Check out Charlotte's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/CCampbellMusic
Buy her EP, Stay, on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/stay-ep/id567557677
Or bandcamp: http://charlottecampbell.bandcamp.com/
Vote for Charlotte to support Gabrielle Aplin on the London date of her tour!:
http://t.co/O5VGwfAnxB
^ NOTE: When clicking this link it will take you to the site and a video of Charlotte's will open. All you'd need do is click "Like" and that counts as one vote. If you click "tweet" as well, I believe this also counts as a vote.
