Czech Vibes: “We share what we love”

If you are into chill, hip hop, lofi or raw electronical music, you most likely come across CZECH VIBES at some point. They are doing an amazing job on their various channels – showcasing their love for music, photography and video art.

We met Magdalena from CZECH VIBES in Vienna for a coffee and had a very interesting talk about her work. Read on, you don’t want to miss out on these insights into the world of CZECH VIBES.

Tell us about the beginning of CZECH VIBES: How did everything start and who are the masterminds behind CZECH VIBES?

Back in the 2014, when we were hiking in Tyrol, we just knew that something is coming. So during that hike, we came up with the name CZECH VIBES and we haven’t stopped creating ever since. Once we identified ourselves with this name, there was no way back. First it was photography (@czech_vibes), then also video and all together with our passion for discovering music, it was a stable base for starting our YouTube music channel a year later, in 2015. The idea was simple, share our landscape photography mixed with underground music we listen during our trips … not just at trips, basically it’s on 24/7. 🙂

To be honest, we just jumped straight into this creative world without any knowledge, any experiences in this field. I was studying geography (Magdalena) and Marketa was studying sociology. We just somehow clicked together and we wanted to share the inner feeling with others. Together we still form the core of Czech Vibes. So 2 people behind all of this, last 2 years working full time, learning, filming music videos, collaborating with music artists and building our Czech Vibes Sound. The collaborative part is really wonderful. Getting to know creative people all over the world, with a similar interests and ambitions, creating together and sharing the art freely is worth every minute spent behind our computer screens in the home office.

On your YouTube channel you’re covering photography, music and videos. Has the channel always been devoted to these 3 art forms?

Yes, it’s still the same concept but it improves with time and our skills. When you scroll to our oldest videos, you can definitely see some progress. Especially in the video part, in 2015 I picked up my first compact camera and since then we are constantly trying to get better and evolve our style and the gear as well. Same with photography. Since we are a music channel with our own visual concept, we cover a lot of things which need to be done.

It usually starts very early in the morning, catching a sunrise somewhere in nature, traveling to new places to get fresh content, editing the photos, choosing the song for a day, being in contact with the music artists and generally directing the style of the music. Thanks to such a close connection to these 3 art forms, after 4 years of filming, we somehow realized that another big part of our activities will be music videos. Naturally. But we had no idea we could actually be able to do it. Only when one musician got in contact with us and gave us the trust to film a first official music video, even though we’ve never filmed one, we started to play with this idea too.

Let’s talk about your music channel. On which platforms can we find the CZECH VIBES channels and which genres/styles are you covering?

The base is definitely our YouTube channel, that’s where the biggest audience is. We are also very active on our Instagram and recently we’ve been working on our Spotify playlists, where we share much more music than on YouTube. It’s daily on YouTube, really the best song and pic of the day. Spotify playlists cover more variety of songs and we update them weekly. We also share music on our most favorite social media page – the old, good SoundCloud. We say social media, because we met so many amazing artists there during last 8 years, long before Instagram and Spotify even existed.

The style of our music channel is very connected to our own personal taste and it’s very simple. We share what we love. It can be a combination of hip hop and electronic music, it can be mix of much more genres but the most important criterium to accept a song is to feel the story explained by its unique melody. Our own imagination must start to work while listening. We are very visual guys. 🙂 But to be more specific, the combination of chill, positive hip hop beats, electronic raw sounds with a touch of lofi is our favorite production style at the moment.

How can artists get in touch with you? Do you except submissions?

For the first 2 years of our existence, we were accepting email submissions, but then it really started to be very hectic in that mailbox. Nowadays, artists can submit songs to us via submithub.com where we check daily the new music and we really appreciate this concept much more than the email submissions, because it’s very transparent for both sides and much faster way how to share the music.

We met so many interesting people over this site and we even established long term relationships, so it’s not just a way how to promote 1 single or an EP, you can really meet the right people here for your career path. Time and a little bit of luck can bring some very interesting opportunities.

You recently started a music label as well. How did that happen? Please, tell us about the artists you’re working with?

After a few years getting to know the music business and options how we can evolve as a music channel, we see the label as a nice way to shape the area of our activities and crystallize our own identity even more. We are currently working with few music producers, e.g. Jeff Kaale, also known as X I X X.

He was the mastermind behind Casey’s Neistat vlog music style and reached a huge internet recognition thanks to this act. Currently he is developing his new sounds and working very hard on his new style, jazzhop vlog music was really a nice place to start. Last week I just heard his two new brand demos which are already phenomenal even without vocalists. Cannot wait to share it with the world. People can expect Jeff Kaale coming back stronger than ever before. Meanwhile they can listen to his latest album Pollen.

Jeff Kaale – B.there.4.u.

As you may noticed, we love to connect people. And we especially love to connect singers and producers. As a first official label release coming at the end of June, we put together Australian singer Jade Alice with Vienna based producer Good Lee and last week we just shot some clips for it at the Austrian/Czech borders in Palava.

The song is going to be called “Kintsugi”. It’s a an old Japanese art form which breaks and repairs broken ceramics as a healing process. We also recently met a wonderful unofficial duo Skyfarmer and Skofi, young artists based in Vienna and we will be cooking something up with them for CZECH VIBES very soon.

How important are data insights for your label work?

We use data insights on a weekly basis, checking the progress and watching our for new possible opportunities. Particularly we enjoy the ForTunes influencer section and we love the new feature where we can even check some statistics from Instagram and Facebook. The thresholds are making our day a bit brighter and we can directly share it to our Insta-stories.

What’s next for CZECH VIBES? Can you give us a sneak peak on cool stuff that you’re working on?

^Right now I’m packing camera gear and brainstorming the last ideas for a music videos shoot, which is going to take place next week in Madeira, the Portugal island in the atlantic ocean. We’re meeting with a very talented young producer from the UK, Laxcity and we will film his first official music video for an upcoming single “Purity”, which is coming on 21st of June. We have special connection to this island, scouted locations multiple times for previous projects there, so this one is going to be huge.

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