News
Hello! We are donkerbot. We are an anonymous independent music writer/producer from North West England. Here you will find our latest news. If you wish to share any of our news updates, simply right-click the [Permalink] link at the top right of the article, and select "Copy Link Address" (or whatever your browser calls it). Then paste the link you've just copied into wherever you want to share it.
Visit our News Archive for all current and previous news items.
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24 December 2024 - Pick My Postcode
[Permalink]Our single Christmas To Remember is featured on Pick My Postcode.
Pick My Postcode is a website with a 100% free lottery, based on UK postcodes. Every day, there are multiple draws in which people can win any amount between £5 and £200, although with rollovers, these winnings can grow. On top of that, every winner also gets paid a bonus, that increases by checking the draws, and by completing surveys. There have been cases of people winning thousands of pounds, simply by participating entirely for free.
One of the draws is called the 'Video Draw', and it's a draw where the winning postcode is revealed upon playing an embedded video. And it's on this draw where the PMP website has now chosen to feature our single.
Earlier this month, the B-side of the same single, Dance Under The Mistletoe, was also featured. It didn't cost us a penny to have our videos featured, but then we also don't get paid for it. We just see it as free promotion, and we've already seen some effects on our streaming figures since our video was first featured.
This is an excellent opportunity for us to test how well Pick My Postcode is as a promotional website, and we'll be giving an update once we have more data to reflect upon (for some reason, YouTube views haven't been updated for the past 12 days in our Amuse dashboard, so we can't tell how the feature has impacted streams yet). Be sure to check back here, or follow us on Bluesky if you're interested in this data as well.
22 December 2024 - Bluesky
[Permalink]We're officially on Bluesky.
In case you don't know what it is, Bluesky is a social network where people can post short statuses, and connect with people with whom they share interests. You might be under the assumption that such a network already exists. This is partially true, however that network has changed a lot these past few years, which led to a lot of people leaving the platform. So that's where Bluesky comes in. A social network that is what the other one once was, without the negativity that is now rife on the old one. We're happy to have joined Bluesky today, and we welcome you to follow our account @donkerbot.bsky.social.
05 December 2024 - Wrapped
[Permalink]We've not forgotten about you! And we hope you haven't forgotten about us either. It's been crazy. Due to events outside of our control, we basically lost all of our free time. We could not spend any time on writing new music, and so we had nothing new to report. We did release our traditional Christmas single in December last year, but we didn't even have time to write one this year. So we're sorry to say there is no new Christmas single this year.
Anyway, it's that time of year again that everybody's favourite music streaming platform we all agree to hate but still have to use has released its annual Wrapped feature. And this is ours:
We know, it's not very exciting, but we do have exciting news on the way (or so we hope), all the way from our friends across the pond, so stay tuned for that!
04 January 2023 - Plans for 2023
[Permalink]We've been asked a lot recently what our plans are for this year. So we thought it'd be a good idea to tell you all about it in one easy-to-reference post.
With the Christmas 2022 season coming to a close, and a new year just starting, it's that time of the year to reflect on the past year, take stock of the current situation, and look ahead at what's to come. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, we've not been able to fully enjoy this Christmas period, and the planned marketing for our single Christmas To Remember couldn't quite go ahead. We managed to produce the music videos for both songs, with special thanks to Lauren Thompson, who has become the voice and the face of our Christmas 2022. If you haven't seen the videos, do check our news post from Christmas Day, which has links to the videos.
We were also grateful to St Helens Star, local newspaper for St Helens Borough, for their coverage of the single's release and videos. This coverage is because Lauren, the vocalist, is local to St Helens, and the videos were filmed in St Helens town centre. We'll be updating our Media page soon, to include the articles.
2022 was also the year our album By The Book was released. With over 3,800 streams since its release on 26 July, it is our most streamed release as measured over the entire year. We are very happy with that result, it's encouraging to see people enjoying our music.
Looking to the future, what will 2023 hold for us? As mentioned before, we are currently going through a difficult personal period which has affected all of our activities. This includes writing new music, so we're sad to say there's currently no release to look forward to. This experience is giving us inspiration, so in time we will certainly have more music, but we're unable to give any estimates about when we'll be able to release our next singles and album.
That said, there are plans for the future. As Eurovision Song Contest is coming to Liverpool this year, we were hoping to get involved one way or another with the festivities. How this involvement is going to look, we don't know at the moment, but we're looking for any opportunities. We are also making plans for a new album release, although this may not be released until 2024. We're interested in working with more local talents, as our experience with Lauren as singer on our Christmas single was very positive. We would like to expand on this. It gives us more control over the final product, it gives the local talent more exposure, and it gives the local newspaper positive stories about their town. This is all part of the greater donkerbot plan, to give to the music communities. This sort of project requires a lot of planning, and planning takes time, which is why it's not expected to happen this year.
Our current situation will change, at some point in the near future. Once we get there, we can continue bringing our visions into the world. We'll be working on Liverpool City Region local work at first, and we hope to expand in the years to come. So stay tuned, because you could become part of the donkerbot story too!
25 December 2022 - Christmas music video
[Permalink]Happy Christmas! The time is finally here, we have officially released our two Christmas videos for our latest single release. Sadly, it's all been delayed due to personal circumstances, but we've worked hard to be able to release these videos as our Christmas present this year to you. Enjoy our videos below, and feel free to share them with your friends.
Special thanks to Lauren Thompson, who sang and performed these songs for the videos.
Christmas To Remember features footage of the official Christmas Lights Switch On event in St Helens.
11 November 2022 - Christmas To Remember - Single release
[Permalink]Our Christmas single for 2022 has been officially released on the major streaming services. Here you will find a list of the main ones, but if you use a different streaming service, there is a chance you will find our music there as well.
Spotify
YouTube Music
Apple Music
SoundCloud
Deezer
Be sure to check out our Links page, for a more comprehensive list of services where you can find our music.
06 November 2022 - Pre-save our new Christmas single now!
[Permalink]
Our new single, Christmas To Remember, will be officially released on 11 November 2022, but you can already pre-save it now on Spotify and Apple Music. This way, you'll ensure you hear the single as soon as it's out. To pre-save, simply go to the single's pre-save page, and select your favourite streaming service there.
As you may be aware, we release a Christmas single every year. This year, we decided to work with a vocalist local to the Liverpool City Region. Lauren Thompson provided the vocals to both songs on the single. We were excited to be working with her in the Elusive Country Club recording studio in St Helens.
03 August 2022 - Where to find our music
[Permalink]We have compiled this handy list of streaming sservices where our music can be found. If you like our sound, be sure to follow us, so you won't miss future releases. Since our last update, we have now also uploaded our latest album By The Book to SoundCloud, so check that out as well.
Also check out our previous news post about the album, it contains links to Amazon, where you can buy the album as mp3 files, and it has the album embedded from both Spotify and YouTube, if you prefer not to leave this site.
Bookmark this page, and check back regularly, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook to be notified of any news regarding future releases.
27 July 2022 - New album released
[Permalink]On the 26th of July, 2022, our latest album, By The Book was officially released worldwide. You can now listen to it on your favourite streaming platform. We've provided a few handy links here for you.
If you're a Spotify Premium user, you can stream the album directly using the widget below, otherwise simply click on this link to open the album in your browser. Or if you're listening on a mobile device, you can find the album by scanning this barcode in the Spotify app.
If you prefer to music on Deezer, this is the link for you. Somehow we can't access it ourselves, but maybe that's because we're not logged in (or even have a Deezer account). If you use Deezer, do let us know if it works for you.
To listen to the album on Apple Music, simply click on this link.
And finally, the album is also available on YouTube Music, we have embedded the automatically generated playlist here for you:
Of course, you can also buy the album on Amazon in the UK, Japan, France, and Germany, to name a few (for some reason, the US one won't load). We should also be on Tidal, but we can't access that ourselves, so we can't give you the link.
So there's plenty of options. If you like it, and you want to share the album with your friends (please do!), rather than having to list all the options yourself, you can just direct them to this page with all the options.
05 July 2022 - Release date announced
[Permalink]Good news, everyone! We are proud to officially announce the release date of our new album, By The Book. On 26 July 2022, you will be able to find it on any of the major streaming services. So whether you use Spotify, or Deezer, or Tidal, or Apple Music, or you just listen to it on the official YouTube channel; it'll be there. We will of course offer you all the links here on our website, so be sure to check back in on the 26th for those.
We've been busy working on some things to add to the release, but we don't know how well this is going to work, so that's one thing we can't give more detail on at the moment. Hopefully it will all be cool and awesome, and then you'll hear all about it. We've had to use otherwise established resources beyond what they were designed for, so there is the possibility it will not work as intended, but the expectation is that it'll all be fine.
Which leaves us with one more thing, the photo, as promised of our single covers, all printed in 7x7" format, that of a traditional vinyl single. We just have to frame them and then these, together with the printed 12" album covers, will get a nice place on our studio walls. We're sorry we don't have a banana for scale on these (we ate all the bananas we had), but we're sure you'll still enjoy this picture nonetheless.
That's it for now, we will be back soon with more news surrounding this album release.
Older news
Older news will become available on our News Archive page.