Uncharted Sounds

A scholarship project for emerging, unsigned artists.

Uncharted Sounds is an initiative from the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast. Alongside Aaron Milligan, and other amazing collaborators, Uncharted Sounds will help to ensure your next music release is done right by providing song writing sessions, production and recording sessions, marketing and social media help, and more.

Uncharted Sounds runs in a Competition format, and details of how to enter can be found on the Instagram Page. 2024 marked the first iteration of the project, where a Belfast-based artist called Jacob Taylor was chosen by a panel of industry experts as the winner following his entry of a demo to unchartedsoundsinfo@gmail.com.

Uncharted Sounds offered entrants the opportunity to have a demo track brought to a professional industry-level standard. The first opportunity is if the panel decide that the song sent by an entrant is shortlisted, the five shortlisted acts this year received a write-up in the Daily Mirror from Taylor Johnson and David Roy.

The chosen winner is then offered free studio time in Two For Joy studios in Belfast with Aaron Milligan, where they can work until the song is finished, this can include co-writing sessions to finalise the idea, as well as free engineering/recording, production and additional instrumentation, and mixing. There is also the opportunity to utilise Southern Regional College's new music studio facilities in their Armagh Campus, should more equipment or room be required.

Alongside the studio sessions, Uncharted Sounds also offered the winner a press release for the track from Lauren Johnson (BBC, Dig With It), as well as a full release schedule and social media consultation with Candice Cathers from Third Bar artist management.The track was then mastered free of charge by Jon Moorehead of Moosetronix.

All of those acts included on the Daily Mirror shortlist, are also offered all of the prizes above in a cut-price package deal - so if you enter and don't win, there's still plenty of opportunity.

How I was Involved?

(Aaron Milligan here) Uncharted Sounds was my idea, I pitched the project to the amazing Oh Yeah Center and SRC staff in November 2023, and they kindly, and enthusiastically, assisted me in making it work in any way that they could.

I wanted to help and encourage young artists to ensure that they approached their next release in the right way. Thinking about each process that is involved, and how their music could actually be heard, rather than thrown out into the void of streaming services and social media. Alongside those brilliant people in the Oh Yeah Centre and SRC, we were able to put together a fantastic team of collaborators, as mentioned above, and were left with a release-ready product for Jacob Taylor in his track 'Tough'. When Jacob does release 'Tough', he has a great recording, master, press release and schedule/release plan all at his fingertips, ready to go.

Get Involved and Enter

We plan on bringing Uncharted Sounds back in 2025, to find out more information please follow the Instagram Page, or email at unchartedsoundsinfo@gmail.com.