Hi. My name is Jimmy Docherty. I have been working as a professional musician in Manchester now for 14 years. In that time i have played in a number of different bands including Karmakops (Stereophonics support), and through that landing a guitar job with Ronan Keating for a couple of years.

I recently finished work on a bunch of recordings which were recorded at home and involved 20 other Manchester musos, all free sessions as money was short but everyone was extremely interested in the project. The likes of Irish folksters Mike McGoldrick and Dezi Donnelly helped me make the project a great success.

Ronan Keatings manager Mark Plunkett took a serious interest in the recordings and last summer started to push me as a songwriter/artist to all the major publishers in London. We kept coming upon the same problem.

These large music cooperations were all extremely keen on the songs themselves but were more interested in what money had been made already with the recordings on TV syncs and placements etc. They would only get involved when the project was ALREADY making money?

I have always had similar experiences dealing with large companies and labels... SO.. should i keep moaning about it all, Simon Cowell, industry exploitation, auto-tune and the likes OR do something about it??

My new project is called The Northern Song Collective. We are NOT a label, NOT a publishing company, NOT Syco but we ARE a new ultra-cool collective of 11 songwriters/artists/producers who are seriously going to make a little change in the way things are done around the 'biz'.