A huge thanks to everyone who voted for Better Than The Book in the OpenLabs songwriting contest (+ some updates while we wait for the results), A little something from Tales of Zale, Hikarian Animations' Patreon, JabunAudio Music Sync Licencing + more!

Hope you've all had great weeks! It's been a busy one for me working on some new Fun Station 4 Kids material, an electronic track in an unfamiliar but super fun genre for a remix contest, and some serious admin stuff for more interesting things in JabunAudio (more on that later). Lots to tell as usual and certainly exciting times, so lets get straight into it!

First of all, I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who voted for "Hearts Racing" by Better Than The Book in the OpenLabs songwriting contest for a chance to be mentored by Linkin Park! When I first entered it, I had no idea that it would receive so much support, and in honesty, I was seriously worried about the popularity contest aspect of this first round of the competition (which has left me in the dust in many competitions before). From the looks of it though, having retained the 5th place position for a few weeks, and unless something drastic happened in the last 6 hours of the competition, "Hearts Racing" should have finished in the Top 10 entries and be onto the next round of the competition: where the Top 10 entries will be marked and ranked by a team of judges! Unfortunately I can't check whether this is the case or not, as while the competition is being judged, all the results are hidden. I have no idea how it'll go down but fingers crossed that the judges appreciate the music and score it well. Now we wait! According to the contest rules, the results should be out roughly a week after the end of the competition, so hopefully I'll have something (great) to report this time next week. Fingers crossed yet again, and we shall see!

Next this week, I've some awesome news to share from Sif of Hikarian Animations, the studio which created Tales of Zale, for which I've been doing the audio post-production since episode 1!  This has got to be one of my favorite animated projects I've worked on and there's 2 huge announcements to be said this week. Firstly, Tales of Zale Episode 3 is officially in production and as opposed to being the usual 6 minute animation, we're looking to go for a full length 10 minute episode! It's still early days yet, and I've yet to start my part, but I'm super excited to be working on this amazing project again! Secondly, and I think this is probably the bigger announcement, Hikarian Animations now has a Patreon page! If you don't know what Patreon is, in short it's a way for fans to give back to the projects they love and help support artists like Sif or myself in creating original content and media. You're able to pledge a small monthly donation (or however big you'd like it to be) and in return you'll get exclusive content as well as the usual content provided by the channel. The extra funding to work on our own projects allows us to focus more on what we do best, and spend less time worrying about putting food on the table with freelance or part-time work, so projects can be finished quicker and everyone's generally happier. If you like Tales of Zale I highly recommend sending a dollar or more Sif's way to help her create this great series! You can support her on Patreon and read up more about Tales of Zale's progress here: 

Click here to support Tales of Zale: https://www.patreon.com/Hikarian

As well as this awesome news, I also have a little behind the scenes from Tales of Zale Episode 2 to share. Below is a wonderful look into the animation process behind this beautiful series: an animatic of the closing scene. It's interesting to note, I'm often mixing the audio to these in the earlier stages of the project, so these stylings are very familiar to me. I love seeing how it all evolves during the production process! Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and please go subscribe to Hikarian Animations on YouTube if you like it:

Lastly in the news this week, I've finally bitten the bullet and sorted out something which has been on mind for lord knows how long: I'm now officially allowing people to licence JabunAudio music (including Better Than The Book) for their productions and media content. Well... technically I've been doing that for the last few years anyway, BUT now you can find my music on music libraries so you don't need to contact me directly, and pay an appropriate fee depending on your project. How you ask? Well it's now all on a nifty site called Ricall! Just search for "Nick Standing", "Jabun", "Better Than The Book" and more and you can select what you'd like to buy and for what purpose and it'll give you an automatic quote. I plan to upload music to more music libraries in the future, so you should hopefully be able to find me on other libraries soon (I'll keep you all posted). However! While these libraries are great, I'm mainly using them as a discovery point for people who don't know me, so if YOU'd like to use any of my music in your own productions, please contact me and we can work out a better rate if you'd like!  Also if there are any music libraries you think'd be interested in my music, please feel free to buzz me about them and I'll be happy to consider uploading there too!

That's about it for this week! Hopefully by the next I'll be able to share the results of the OpenLabs competition, but I'll just have to wait and see. I'm hoping to finish this remix soon too, so I'll be sharing that for sure as soon as it's ready. After that I've some more music commissions to complete so I'm sure I'll keep busy! Before I sign out for today, I'd like to ask you this: What would you like from JabunAudio next, and do you think Patreon is a way for me to go for Better Than The Book or Jabun? If so what kind of rewards would you like? I'd be interested to know your thoughts! Anyway, that's all I have to say this week! Until next time I hope you have a great one and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and all of my projects. Take care and see you next week!