News

The June 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for June 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

We shall elaborate further with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno. Finito!

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp, and you can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

We have been enjoying a massive amount of streaming at SoundCloud so far in 2025. In June 2025 we achieved more streams than any other previous month. In fact, June 2025 saw more streams than any other whole year we’ve had songs on SoundCloud apart from 2017.

Even though we have only completed five months of the year, our streams have already massively exceeded every previous year on record. This includes 2017, our previous best year, when the Atom Collector website was at its peak. This record breaking year is going to be a new high watermark, and will be a good challenge to beat. It’s very enjoyable to see the evidence of all our hard work travelling around the world!

Whilst we still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud and its Insights system, there has been enough improvement in data quality in the last couple of months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

The data from the Wud Records Snotify for Artists pages covers everybody at that platform on our label. We also use the Snortify data from our distributors CD Baby and Soundrop.

Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely right now. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, which don’t cover the exact range of dates we would like them to, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.

Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.

Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/

This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.

Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.

Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.

The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so wrong. It’s a proper mess.

Not only that, two of our songs have had “excessive” plays. This excess has resulted in punitive measures, which we are still protesting. It seems ridiculous, but that is what has happened.

One such song, Future Sadness Past from Dark Company‘s Signmaker album, was removed from spotify completely. In order to punish us for having our song played “excessively”, the rest of the Signmaker album was also removed from spotify.

The other missing track is Welcome to the Family by Flicker, from At Least 1000 Words.

Our distributors have so far been unable to help regarding these issues.

As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. They are, after all, extremely shabby corporate scumbags, and have treated our label, and every other independent artist, with absolute contempt. Perhaps because we have spoken out repeatedly against their egregious policies?

Various members of our team have had quite heated arguments about the merits or otherwise of leaving our music on that wretched corporate megaplatform. For now it is still there, because it is easier to leave it there, than it is to remove it and then put it back. More news on this to come soon.

Deezer, Tidal, YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, etc.

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

In Conclusion…

Previously the algorithm we used gave greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

How Did We Calculate The June 2025 Chart?

The latest system is based upon some of the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together to make the new Top Ten.

We have combined the stats from the general trends and tendencies from all of the services mentioned above. Each platform is represented and results from each are weighted and added together. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored. The feedback from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music is now rendered insignificant.

Only you, the listener, can influence our June 2025 chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during June 2025 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. Just one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams. By buying a download, you genuinely help us keep the fires burning, and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The June 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features only one act – the Band of Georges. This happened just once before, two months ago. Eight of the songs are new entries. The other two are both climbers.

We anticipate a lot of new entries will find their way into our charts until all of the Band of Georges material has been released.

It is possible we will be finished with those releases during the forthcoming month of July. Once they are done, the other things we have finished in the meantime will also be released. Lots to look forward to!

Band of Georges

As we are releasing a lot of the Band of Georges demos, and shall continue to do so until they are all available, our charts are likely to be a bit strange for a month or two longer yet. We are typically seeing 500 to 1000 streams on SoundCloud every day, and not even Spotify can compete with that.

A couple of months ago, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges has had. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of March! How swiftly things can happen. And what a month it has been for one of our most revered stars, claiming all of the spots in the top ten.

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. Because now, we have been allowed to release all ten volumes of his early songs in their demo form.

We have done very little work to these recordings. They were just lifted from their master cassettes and digitised in our studios, and normalised to 0dB. That was it. Everything sounds just as it was. The cassettes, nearly 40 years old, have stood the test of time very well.

All of these songs will take some time yet to release. Volumes I to VI are finished aleady and Volume VII is at its halfway point, with Side A finished and Side B about to begin.

The newest chart features one song from Volume V Side A, two from Volume V Side B, two from Volume VI Side A, one from Volume VI Side B, three from Volume VII Side A, and one from the Песня За EP. Will any of them feature next month?

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations.

Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud. There is likely to be extra information given on the two separate pages, so we recommend you check out both.

For Volume V Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume V Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume V Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume V Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume VI Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume VI Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume VI Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume VI Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume VII Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume VII Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For the Песня За EP at Wud Records, please click here.
For the Песня За EP at SoundCloud, please click here.

* None of our other acts made it onto the June 2025 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in June 2025, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The June 2025 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.

The streaming success of the Band of Georges has been remarkable. We have released about 100 of his demo songs so far. The streaming success of the songs that have been released so far has gone far beyond any of our expectations.

Several of the songs have already been streamed thousands of times. By the end of May 2025, the total streams for all the music at Wud Records had far outstripped any previous year of streaming. This is clearly a tremendous streaming success, with more than half of the year still to go.

As the songs have been so well received, we are considering adding the Band of Georges collections to Bandcamp, and possibly even distributing them to streaming services such as Apple Music and spotify.

We have also added a pair of compilations (the Flashback EP and Песня За) to the Band of Georges collection and plan to add more. These include The Concept Album, which we have spoken to George about in recent times, and the songs that were part of the sets of various legacy bands. Some of those bands have other recordings of the songs, although not all of them. We think it might be fun to make such compilations all the same.

George requested that we change the photo for one of the Band of Georges volumes. He said that he didn’t like the photo we had used. In order to keep him happy, we changed it.

We were not expecting to be able to release any of this material after the things he previously said about his demo recordings, so we tend to feel that we should honour his wishes regarding these things.

The collection in question is Volume V Side A. We have simply used a different photo from the same era and swapped that onto the artwork.

Generally speaking, we have tried to use photos taken around the time that the songs were written for these collections. George said he felt that “an old bloke with a long hair and a beard” might not look so appealing. So we have gone with this idea.

Most of the photos in the various galleries at the Wud Records website were scanned and uploaded in the very early days of the website going live. Some of them even predate the current website, and were scanned in 1999 when the first Wud site was online.

As such, a lot of the files are not very good quality. We are planning to replace the old images with new, higher quality scans.

In other Wud Records news, we have been working behind the scenes on more music by Pok the Bard. There are two of his songs which have been remixed and remastered, and a third which will be a new release. However, we will not be releasing any music at all until after all of the Band of Georges material has been released.

That is not all. There will soon be more songs by The Bastard Sons of Dennis ready to be released, and some more Flicker music too. There are another twelve songs by Dark Company waiting to be released as well.

All new releases will be announced on BlueSky and Twitter, as well as in our News service. Please make sure to bookmark and follow us to be sure of receiving all of the latest news.

You can also sign up to our mailing list by clicking here. It’s quick and easy with only two fields to fill in, and we never ever share that info with anyone.

Halfway! Yes, half of the Band of Georges songs have now been released to SoundCloud. There are ten cassettes, and the first five are all fully released, for your entertainment, amusement and listening pleasure. So we are therefore at the halfway point of this project.

The Band of Georges recordings were made in 1986 and 1987 using a Tascam 244. This device was a 4-track cassette portastudio, and the best such thing available in 1986.

George had written around 250 or so songs and wanted to try to bring them to actualisation, by recording them so that they could be heard. It was quite the project at the time, due to there being so many songs. He felt that the songs were no good sitting on bits of paper in a folder. After organising them and choosing not to record the ones he liked the least, he set about the business with determination.

It has been fascinating to hear these songs. George had always said that these songs were all dreadful and the sound was horrible, but we think that is utter nonsense. A lot of the songs are really good and the overall production is pretty decent as well, especially considering the limitations of the technology some forty years ago.

For reasons of authenticity, we have simply digitised the recordings from their original cassette masters and then normalised the sound to 0dB. There is no enhancement of any sort. The cassettes have stood the test of time extraordinarily well.

Each master cassette has been uploaded as two separate albums – an A side and a B side. So far there are ten such albums – five cassettes, each with two sides. Songs were compiled chronologically, and we have kept them in the same order.

Once all of the Band of Georges songs have been released, we will have some completely new material to bring you. We are hoping that during this period of releasing Band of Georges material, a number of other songs will be finished and ready to go. At the halfway stage, we can safely say that it’s looking promising.

Something that has surprised all of us here at Wud Records is how popular some of the songs have become, especially those that were never previously heard, and never performed by any band. We are looking forward to further such surprises.

It will take a couple more months to release the rest of the Band of Georges material at the current rate.

There are two additional compilations also released. The Flashback EP has the three parts of Flashback all together in one place, something George says has never happened before. The other is Песня За, which has been separated into its four parts for the EP and the full-length version left whole for the album version. More compilations are planned to be added as more songs are released.

The halfway point also marks the 100th song of George to be released, At One. As from a little later today, we shall start to release the songs from Volume VI Side A.

The first five cassettes of the Band of Georges cover the period from December 1981 to July 1985. You can listen to each here at the Wud Records website by clicking on the album below:

Volume I Side A – December 1981 to July 1982.
Volume I Side B – July 1982 to December 1982.
Volume II Side A – November 1982 to December 1982.
Volume II Side B – January 1983.
Volume III Side A – January 1983 to April 1983.
Volume III Side B – April 1983 to December 1983.
Volume IV Side A – January 1984 to October 1984.
Volume IV Side B – November 1984 to April 1985.
Volume V Side A – April 1985 to May 1985.
Volume V Side B – May 1985 to July 1985.

Please remember that George’s comments, memories and descriptions of each song are exclusive to the Band of Georges page at Wud Records. Each song’s page at SoundCloud also has notes, but these are written by Sam and are different.

Please feel free to read both! The SoundCloud pages are given in the links below:

Volume I Side A – December 1981 to July 1982.
Volume I Side B – July 1982 to December 1982.
Volume II Side A – November 1982 to December 1982.
Volume II Side B – January 1983.
Volume III Side A – January 1983 to April 1983.
Volume III Side B – April 1983 to December 1983.
Volume IV Side A – January 1984 to October 1984.
Volume IV Side B – November 1984 to April 1985.
Volume V Side A – April 1985 to May 1985.
Volume V Side B – May 1985 to July 1985.

The May 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for May 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

We shall elaborate further with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno. Finito!

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp, and you can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

We have been enjoying a massive amount of streaming at SoundCloud so far in 2025. Even though we have only completed five months of the year, our streams have already exceeded every previous year on record. This includes 2017, our previous best year, when the Atom Collector website was at its peak. This record breaking year is going to be a new high watermark, and will be a good challenge to beat. It’s very enjoyable to see the evidence of all our hard work travelling around the world!

About a year ago, SoundCloud decided, in their seemingly infinite wisdom, to downgrade their excellent ‘Stats’ for premium users (such as ourselves) to something that was so completely and unbelievably dreadful it was unfit for purpose. They call it ‘Insights’, and they were surprisingly uninsightful, despite the profoundly misleading nomenclature.

Somebody at the company thought it would be a good idea to take a system that worked spectacularly well in real time, and replace it with another that was completely riddled with inconsistencies and errors. One could even observe the data changing right before one’s eyes! Even some of the most basic functions, such as choosing particular date ranges, no longer worked properly. Which idiot thought this was a good idea?

Whilst we still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud, there has been enough improvement in data quality in the last couple of months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

The data from the Wud Records Snotify for Artists pages covers everybody at that platform on our label. We also use the Snortify data from our distributors CD Baby and Soundrop.

Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely right now. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, which don’t cover the exact range of dates we would like them to, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.

Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.

Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/

This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.

Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.

Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.

The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so wrong. It’s a proper mess.

Not only that, two of our songs have had “excessive” plays. This excess has resulted in punitive measures, which we are still protesting. It seems ridiculous, but that is what has happened.

One such song, Future Sadness Past from Dark Company‘s Signmaker album, was removed from spotify completely. In order to punish us for having our song played “excessively”, the rest of the Signmaker album was also removed from spotify.

The other missing track is Welcome to the Family by Flicker, from At Least 1000 Words.

Our distributors have so far been unable to help regarding these issues.

As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. They are, after all, extremely shabby corporate scumbags, and have treated our label, and every other independent artist, with absolute contempt. Perhaps because we have spoken out repeatedly against their egregious policies?

Various members of our team have had quite heated arguments about the merits or otherwise of leaving our music on that wretched corporate megaplatform. For now it is still there, because it is easier to leave it there, than it is to remove it and then put it back. More news on this to come soon.

Deezer, Tidal, YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, etc.

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

In Conclusion…

Previously the algorithm we used gave greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

How Did We Calculate The May 2025 Chart?

The latest system is based upon some of the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together to make the new Top Ten.

We have combined the stats from the general trends and tendencies from all of the services mentioned above. Each platform is represented and results from each are weighted and added together. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored. The feedback from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music is now rendered insignificant.

Only you, the listener, can influence our June 2025 chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during May 2025 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. Just one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams. By buying a download, you genuinely help us keep the fires burning, and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The May 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features only two different artists. Eight of the songs are new entries. There is one re-entry and one non-mover.

We anticipate a lot of new entries will find their way into our charts until all of the Band of Georges material has been released, and the other things we have finished in the meantime have also been released. Lots to look forward to!

Band of Georges

As we are releasing a lot of the Band of Georges demos, and shall continue to do so until they are all available, our charts are likely to be a bit strange for a month or two longer yet. We are typically seeing 300 to 600 streams on SoundCloud every day, and not even Spotify can compete with that.

A couple of months ago, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges has had. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of March! How swiftly things can happen. And what a month it has been for one of our most revered stars, claiming nine of the spots in the top ten.

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. Because now, we have been allowed to release all ten volumes of his early songs in their demo form.

We have done very little work to these recordings. They were just lifted from their master cassettes and digitised in our studios, and normalised to 0dB. That was it. Everything sounds just as it was. The cassettes, nearly 40 years old, have stood the test of time very well.

All of these songs will take some time yet to release. Volumes I to IV are finished aleady and Volume V is at its halfway point, with Side A finished and Side B about to begin.

The newest chart features one song from Volume II Side B, three from Volume III Side B, two from Volume IV Side A, one from Volume IV Side B, one from Volume V Side A, and one from the Песня За EP. Will any of them feature next month?

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations.

Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud. There is likely to be extra information given on the two separate pages, so we recommend you check out both.

For Volume II Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume II Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume III Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume III Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume IV Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume IV Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume IV Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume IV Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume V Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume V Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For the Песня За EP at Wud Records, please click here.
For the Песня За EP at SoundCloud, please click here.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

The Bastard Sons of Dennis enjoyed a good month in May 2025. Their cause was largely helped by one of their songs unexpectedly going viral on Spotify.

Since the studio upgrade in 2023, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Fans of our gruesome twosome can expect some exciting news regarding their music fairly soon.

That’s not all. We are waiting on just a single file before making a big announcement, although it isn’t a terribly vital one. We may simply move forwards without it should it not arrive.

A progtastic full-band mini-album by the dynamic duo is also in the early stages of finalisation.

Sadly we tend to feel that further recordings of their many remaining Blue Oyster Cult covers seems an unlikely prospect. This is mostly due to “discommunication, disorganisation and general untogetherness”, as the legend who is Paul Bateman once said of them when they were in Rough Terrain.

Returning to our charts at number two is a re-entry for The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Seven Screaming Diz-Busters is a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. It is a song for which they were well known.

Originally this song was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performances by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

* None of our other acts made it onto the May 2025 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in May 2025, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The May 2025 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.

Flashback E.P. by the Band of Georges released? What tomfoolery is this?

A new compilation of three songs, that we have called the Flashback E.P., has been released. All three songs have already been released individually to their respective Volume albums. We felt it might be fun to put all three Flashbacks together in one E.P.

These three songs are cassette demos recorded in 1986 on a Tascam 244 portastudio. They are rather lo-fi in their nature, yet all of those demo songs have a quaint charm of their own. We left them largely alone without fiddling with the original cassette mixes. The only treatment we gave the songs after lifting them from cassette was to normalise the volume, without any compression or noise reduction, to 0dB.

The first Flashback was written in 1982. George asked Simon to rewrite the words for him, which he did. The song Flashback later became part of the set of Fooog Dinboffin and the Release, Sirius Rising, Now, Lemming Meringue, Wud, The Addled Eggs, The Subterraineans and Rough Terrain. The Band of Georges version appears at the end of Volume I Side B. You can check that out by clicking here.

Flashback Part 2 was called Hard Times, and this was a much rockier affair with contrasting moods. Hard Times is a song that lamented the fact that some of the people George was fond of had moved away, so he couldn’t be with them any more. It was composed in 1983 and performed by Wud when that outfit had grown to a full band. The Band of Georges version appears on Volume III Side A. You can check that out by clicking here.

Flashback Part 3 is the original 1982 lyrics that George had written for Flashback, with new music composed in 1983. Flashback Part 3 was never part of the set of any band. The Band of Georges version appears also on Volume III Side A. You can check that out by clicking here.

We may make new cover art for the Flashback E.P. at some point. Several scanning and research projects are in the works.

There will be some more compilations of songs by the Band of Georges coming soon, once the individual songs have all been released to their different Volumes. These albums contain all of the songs by the Band of Georges, and were recorded and compiled in chronological order.

We shall let George‘s fans know about such future compilations in our News service, on BlueSky and X, and perhaps even in a newsletter. You can sign up to receive Wud Records news direct to your mailbox by clicking here. There are only two fields to fill in and your data will never be shared, just stored on a spreadsheet on an office hard drive.

Each song by the Band of Georges has a comment by George regarding how he feels now about the songs, how he felt when he wrote them 40 or so years ago, and any other memories he has of the songs or the recordings. He had not heard these old recordings for well over 30 years before he finally agreed to let Wud Records release them to the general public. It took a lot of persuasion for this to happen!

The release of the Band of Georges songs is currently still ongoing. There are ten cassettes altogether. Now that the first three have all been fully released, all three parts of Flashback are now out in the public domain. We felt it was time to release a Flashback E.P., with all three songs together for the first time.

The songs from the fourth cassette will start being released next. We will be releasing all of the Band of Georges material before any more music by any of our other acts, or Archive acts, is released.

To hear all of the Band of Georges albums, please click here and choose which one you like to listen to first.

The April 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for April 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

We shall elaborate further with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno. Finito!

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp, and you can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

About a year ago, SoundCloud decided, in their seemingly infinite wisdom, to downgrade their excellent ‘Stats’ for premium users (such as ourselves) to something that was so completely and unbelievably dreadful it was unfit for purpose. They call it ‘Insights’, and they were surprisingly uninsightful, despite the profoundly misleading nomenclature.

Somebody at the company thought it would be a good idea to take a system that worked spectacularly well in real time, and replace it with another that was completely riddled with inconsistencies and errors. One could even observe the data changing right before one’s eyes! Even some of the most basic functions, such as choosing particular date ranges, no longer worked properly. Which idiot thought this was a good idea?

Whilst we still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud, there has been enough improvement in data quality in the last couple of months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

The data from the Wud Records Snotify for Artists pages covers everybody at that platform on our label. We also use the Snortify data from our distributors CD Baby and Soundrop.

Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely right now. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, which don’t cover the exact range of dates we would like them to, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.

Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.

Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/

This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.

Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.

Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.

The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so wrong. It’s a proper mess.

Not only that, two of our songs have had “excessive” plays. This excess has resulted in punitive measures, which we are still protesting. It seems ridiculous, but that is what has happened.

One such song, Future Sadness Past from Dark Company‘s Signmaker album, has been removed from spotify completely. In order to punish us for having our song played “excessively”, the rest of the Signmaker album has also been removed from spotify.

The other missing track is Welcome to the Family by Flicker, from At Least 1000 Words. This track seems to have been hidden from the public.

Our distributors have so far been unable to help regarding these issues.

As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. They are, after all, extremely shabby corporate scumbags, and have treated our label, and every other independent artist, with absolute contempt. Perhaps because we have spoken out repeatedly against their egregious policies?

Various members of our team have had quite heated arguments about the merits or otherwise of leaving our music on that wretched corporate megaplatform. For now it is still there, because it is easier to leave it there, than it is to remove it and then put it back. More news on this to come soon.

Deezer, Tidal, YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, etc.

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

In Conclusion…

Previously the algorithm we used gave greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

How Did We Calculate The April 2025 Chart?

The latest system is based upon some of the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together to make the new Top Ten.

We have combined the stats from the general trends and tendencies from all of the services mentioned above. Each platform is represented and results from each are weighted and added together. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored. The feedback from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music is now rendered insignificant.

Only you, the listener, can influence our April 2025 chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during April 2025 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. Just one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams. By buying a download, you genuinely help us keep the fires burning, and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The April 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten is an even madder chart than last month! All ten songs are new entries. Only the very first one we published had ten!

Band of Georges

As we are releasing a lot of the Band of Georges demos, and shall continue to do so until they are all available, our charts are likely to be a bit strange for a month or two longer yet. We are typically seeing 300 to 600 streams on SoundCloud every day, and not even Spotify can compete with that.

A couple of months ago, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges has had. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of March! How swiftly things can happen. And what a month it has been for one of our most revered stars, claiming all of the spots in the top ten.

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people have tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. For now we have been allowed to release all ten volumes of his early songs in demo form.

All of these songs will take some time to release. Volume I and Volume II are finished aleady and Volume III is well underway, with Side A finished. With any luck, Volume III Side B will start to appear before long.

The newest chart features are two songs from Volume I Side B, four from Volume II Side A, two from Volume II Side B and two from Volume III Side A. Will any of them feature next month?

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations.

Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud.

For Volume I Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume I Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume I Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume I Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume II Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume II Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume II Side B at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume II Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.
For Volume III Side A at Wud Records, please click here.
For Volume III Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.

* None of our other acts made it onto the April 2025 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in April 2025, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The April 2025 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.