Welcome to indiestore insider,

It’s a big day for indiestore as you’re about to find out. As you know, we’ve been beavering away to improve the service since we launched back in May. We’ve already added a bunch of functionality –A to Z listings, live charts, page view and preview info on each and every store to name but a few. We’ve also spent a lot of time tinkering, making cosmetic changes, improving the reliability – stuff you perhaps wouldn’t notice, but stuff that makes a difference.

Today, we’re delighted to tell you that we’re unleashing not one, but two major improvements. The details of what you’re getting are below. We hope you like. Please let us know what you think on the messagebaords…

Righto, down to business then…

indiestore update

Two big changes have just dropped into indiestore. We’re hugely excited about the developments and we’re sure you will be too. So what we got? Here’s the latest...

- Bundles

This is the single most exciting addition we’ve made to indiestore so far. If you sensibly signed up for the Pro version, you can now bundle your tracks… which in normal speak means singles, EPs and albums are now a few clicks away. A visit to your indiestore Manager will reveal ‘see/edit bundles’ in the menu.

All of which means you can now bundle tracks together and price them more effectively. We’re currently working with default bundle prices, but we will be changing them soon to give you more scope. Your thoughts as to the prices you like to see included would, as always, be appreciated on the forum.

Visit your manager now, click ‘add/view bundles’ to get started. It’s very simple to use, but we will be adding help notes later in the week. Any problems, post on the forums and we’ll be on hand to help out.

- Tags

As you will know we’ve had a tag section in the Manager for some time. They didn’t do anything other than allow you to attract people’s attention with several well-chosen words. The thinking was that instead of providing a list of genres for you to choose from, we’d let you chose the words you’d like to define your music. It offers much more scope than simply choosing ‘pop’ from dropdown.

The really good news is that the tags are now active. What that means is people visiting indiestore to search for bands now have another way to search. At the risk of teaching gran to suck eggs, here’s how it works. If there’s an artist you like who have used the word ‘pop’ in their tags, you can click on ‘pop’ and indiestore will pull up all the artists who have used the word ‘pop’ in their tags.

So, if you’re an artist and you’ve not entered any tags yet, get to it. It could really help lift you store. Don’t forget to put a comma after every word!

Again, we’ll be providing full help later in the week, so any problems of questions please visit the forum where we’ll be waiting.

indiestore recommends… indiestore.com/keyboardrebel
Keyboard Rebel landed in our lives last week, and boy are we pleased they did. Despite looking like barn-dwelling bumpkins, the music this Manchester five-piece make is like drinking pure sunshine. Check, for example, their excellent new single ‘My Lordship’ – chugging, thrumming, throbbing pop music at its very, very best. We’re excited, can you tell? It’s the kind of excitement we’ve not felt since the early chaotic excursions of one Badly Drawn Boy… and we all know what happened to him. Have a listen now, your day will be all the better for it.

If you’d like to be featured in indiestore recommends, or would like to nominate someone else for inclusion, please email neil@indiestore.com and tell us why everyone should know more. Best sales pitch goes in the mail!