Lagoona

Lagoona was a dance and techno band from Porjus, northern Sweden, that was active during the years 1996-2004. The two members, Andreas Viklund (born 1980) and Björn Karlsson (born 1976) got famous on the internet in 1997 as one of the first groups to release all their music as free MP3 files - long before the format became widely popular. Lagoona reached a huge success on the MP3 scene, peaking the top charts of MP3.com at several times and getting more than seven million song downloads during their active years. The band got two songs at the #1 spot of the MP3.com Music chart, "The journey" in August 2000 and "Emotions in trance" a couple of months later the same year. The band also had several other songs in high positions on the MP3.com Music chart, including "The promised land" at #2. In the MP3.com genre charts, all songs Lagoona released (over 40 tracks in total) reached a top-20 place at some point. Lagoona got more than 2.4 million song plays from MP3.com, and in total more than 8 million recorded downloads as of 2007 - a number which only a few bands in Sweden could match at the time. Lagoona also released their music on other sites, like Beatmaka.com, Weedshare.com and Javamusic.com, where they also reached the #1 spots, and they were ranked in the mp3charts.com "Global Top 100" for more than two years in a row. In 2001, Lagoona started working with vocals. The band recorded two songs with Dutch female singer Lizanne Hennessey ("Always in my heart" and "Be my friend"), and in 2003 the band co-operated with Swedish singer Åsa Holmberg who recorded one of Lagoonas most well-known songs, "Into my dream". Åsa also performed live with the band on stage during 2003 and 2004. Lagoona did over 30 live performances all over northern Sweden, playing as opening acts for Swedish artists like Markoolio and Da Buzz. They were assisted on stage by DJ Magho (2000–2002) and DJ Isecore (2002–2004). The band's first commercial release was a remix on the Eskimo single "Dreaming of me" (In.Disc/NorskeGram). Lagoona has also produced music for British/Australian popstar Gina G and released single tracks on several international compilation albums, with the last major release being "Cream of the clubs 2004" (ZYX/DanceStreet) and "A trip in Trance 3" (Blue Dot). In 2006, two years after the band was put to rest, British label RFU Recordingz released a vinyl single with a Happy Hardcore remix of "Into my dream". Among their merits in the later years, their "Final destination" became the most downloaded song of 2003 at Beatmaka.com after staying several months on top of the charts. "Final destination" is also the only Lagoona song where both members are singing the vocals. At the same ranking for year 2004, Lagoona had three songs on the top-20 ("Into my dream" being the highest at #12). Lagoona also got #1 at the Weedshare top chart with "Into my dream". The band also released three own albums and was featured on a number of singles and compilation albums. However, Lagoona never got any big commercial breakthrough - and the members concluded that Lagoona were never any commercial project. The music is still free for everyone to download from the website of ex-member Andreas Viklund.