‘In every cloud, there is a silver lining’, goes the old adage. Michael Dawkins found that to be true while promoting ‘Long for Brighter Views’, his second EP.
Initially released in April by Orchard, an affiliate of Sony Music, he had a falling-out with administrators at that company. He moved to DistroKid, which released a remastered version of the set one month later.
The New York-based singer’s decision has paid dividends.
“I had a dispute with them (Orchard) because the impact of ‘Long for Brighter Views’ caused my catalog to generate 1.38 million streams in one month but Orchard said they could only account for 150,000 streams. When I asked them what happened to the other 1.2 million streams, they said that 150,000 is the only data YouTube gave them, so I told them to delete the album which resulted in loss of all the streams that were generated,” Dawkins disclosed. “The EP was released a second time on May 19 and has generated more than 1,000,000 streams.”
The stream surge is music to the ears of Dawkins who took a different direction on his latest project. After years of recording lovers rock and roots-reggae songs, he went for a pop feel on songs like ‘Long for Brighter Views’, ‘Celebrate’, ‘Africa Rise’ and ‘Feelings of The Heart’.
To help him achieve that, Dawkins called up Gita Puspita, a producer from Indonesia and musician David Downie of Hilltop Studio in New York.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Dawkins has been recording music for over 35 years. Some of his previous songs are ‘Don’t Give me No Crack’ (done as Micky D), and a cover of The Hollies’ ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my brother’.