Sound Check hands the release schedule to the audience. Two finished but unreleased tracks go head to head in TEK Roulette, listeners vote, and the winning record is the one DNKYBongsTV puts out first. No A&R meeting, no marketing forecast — just which song the people who actually listen want to hear.

The idea came out of a recurring frustration. Independent artists finish more music than they can afford to release properly, and choosing what goes first is usually a guess dressed up as strategy. Sound Check replaces the guess with a signal. It also does something a release calendar can’t: it puts unreleased music in front of an audience early and lets them feel some ownership of what happens to it.

The Rules of Sound Check

Each round is deliberately simple. Two tracks are posted with artwork and a short note on who made them. Voting stays open for the length of the round. One vote per person. The track with more votes moves into the release queue first; the other isn’t discarded, it just waits its turn — most runners-up come out within a couple of months. Artists see the raw numbers either way, which is often more useful to them than the outcome.

Why It Matters for Independent Artists

A Sound Check round gives an artist three things a normal release doesn’t. Real pre-release demand data. An audience that has already heard the record and has a reason to care when it drops. And a documented moment the network can build coverage around — rounds regularly turn into follow-up reporting in G.U.M.M. Magazine and airplay on Gemwork Radio.

Getting Your Music into a Round

Tracks come from across the network — Grown RenegadeZ Music, Last Kind Recordz and LK Jazz — and from open submissions. If you have two finished records and can’t decide which leads, submit music and say so in the notes. Approved DJs can pull promotional and clean versions of Sound Check winners through DJ Access.

Vote in the Current Round

The live matchup is above. Voting takes a few seconds and you don’t need an account, though network members get notified when new rounds open and hear winners before general release. Results are announced on air and archived here.

Sound Check is a small experiment with a straightforward premise: the people listening usually know. Cast your vote and find out whether they do.