Resources & Ideas for independent recording artists to accompany the radio show BBC Introducing: Fresh On The Net presented by Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music every Sunday and Monday morning 01.00-03.00 gmt
My new BBC blog launched this week – with a first post covering this week’s happenings on 6 Music’s BBC Introducing Week, and a new post today about last night’s Maida Vale event – which I co-hosted with Steve Lamacq. We presented four of our favourite artists: Babe Shadow, Let’s Buy Happiness, The Neat and Post War Years – check out the latest post here for photos and reviews of all four bands, plus links to where you can find video footage of their performances.
And now – sorry to harp on about this – but if you like what you hear – either there or on BBC 6 Music generally – please fill in the BBC Trust consultation document here on the proposed closure of BBC 6 Music and Asian Network. A depressing number of people we meet and speak to within the music industry are nder the impression that the oyutcry so far has been enough to save these stations. Unfortunately that’s very much not the case. In the weeks since the consultation was announced BBC management figures from Andy Parfitt, to Caroline Thompson, to Tim Davie, to the director general himself have made further public pronouncements underlining their absolute determination to press ahead with their plans to close us down. For the next 25 days the general public still has a chance to change the minds of the supervisory body, the BBC Trust, and persuade them to reject the proposals. You don’t have to fill out any of the sections of the consultation document you don’t want to, and you can also remain anonymous if you wish.
This week on 6 Music Introducing we bring you a free mixtape featuring some of our favourite artists from the first three months of 2010, available as two 16-track downloads via the podcast links below. Share and enjoy!
We think these fine artists deserve a wider audience – if you enjoy them as much as we do, tell your friends about our weekly album length podcast. You can subscribe or write a review on iTunes here.
Yes of course I’m gutted about the proposed closure of 6 Music. Steve Lamacq has already said pretty much everything a presenter can say on the subject on his blog – though keep an eye on Adam Buxton in the next few days…
However I haven’t read as much about the impact that closing Asian Network will have on the huge and thriving South Asian music scene here in the UK. The only national outlet for new and unknown artists in these genres is on Bobby Friction‘s richly eclectic playlists of homegrown bhangra, desi and dubstep which he airs three hours a night, four nights a week. For freshness, expertise and sheer personal warmth there’s nothing remotely like it on UK radio, as you can hear at bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/friction
The official on-air line for presenters at both stations is that we can thank listeners for their warm wishes – and although we can’t read out their complaints about the closure, we can forward them afterwards to the Trust. What we can say on air is:
“The BBC Trust would like to hear your views on the proposed closure of 6 Music and Asian Network at bbc.co.uk/trust/consultations“.
We do warmly appreciate our listeners’ enthusiasm. We do understand their frustration as BBC Management continues to parrot the official line rather than engaging with the counter arguments they raise. And we note their fears that the decision is already a done deal – that once again the public consultation will prove to be an expensive exercise in windowdressing.
So here’s an important message to concerned listeners:
* Do fill out the Trust’s online survey – or send them an email – but please only do it once. If it turns out there’s been widespread cheating, it will discredit the results
* Do call the BBC complaints line 03700 100 222 – all calls get logged and passed to the Trust. Again, don’t make multiple calls under different names, for the same reason.
* Instead, spread the word. Tell your friends about Asian Network and 6 Music – they can hear any of the shows at any time via the BBC iPlayer or subscribe to any of our podcasts here
When making your views known to the Trust, here’s the crucial point:
The argument is not about whether Stuart Maconie or Bobby Friction make excellent radio shows. It’s about whether that excellence should be merged into digital offerings from fewer, bigger, more marketable “brands”.
If you are keen that Asian Network and 6 Music should survive as distinct public service offerings, then your best hope is to convince all 11 members of the BBC Trust of their importance. That there’s more to “Putting Quality First” than narrow categories and brand consolidation. And that there’s a place in the nation’s heart (and half a percent of the BBC budget) for these two small, standalone centres of excellence.
Unless the the BBC Trust members are persuaded to take a robust stand on this specific point, there’s no reason to suppose from their recent pronouncements that BBC management will change their plans by one iota.
I’m Tom Robinson – thanks for listening. Taking us up to the end of today’s post, here’s Noah And The Whale:
Haha – should have known those crafty selfpublicists OK Go! had ulterior motives when Damian slagged off EMI in the New York Times. They already had a killer video up their sleeve and EMI allegedly wouldn’t let them make it embeddable on YouTube. Solution: leave EMI. Result: almost 8 million views in two weeks, and rising fast. But will it result in corresponding mass sales? Only time will tell…
All things considered, “The Axe Factor” is an ironic choice of name for a new feature on BBC 6 Music in March 2010. But hey – why not click on the link and go vote for your favourite alt/indie guitar player of the last 30 years. Meanwhile the 6 Music Interactive team handed me their in-house guitar and asked me to explain on camera how to play 2-4-6-8 Motorway. The result was a bit of a ramble, but hopefully gives the general idea…
For latest example of shortsighted corporate folly by the record industry, see this story in NY Times by Damian Kulash from OK Go!
“In 2006 we made a video of us dancing on treadmills for our song “Here It Goes Again.” We shot it at my sister’s house without telling EMI, our record company, and posted it on the fledgling YouTube without EMI’s permission…. It was viewed millions, then tens of millions of times. It brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents…. To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement.
“Now we’ve released a new album and a couple of new videos. But the fans and bloggers who helped spread “Here It Goes Again” across the Internet can no longer do what they did before, because our record company has blocked them from embedding our video on their sites… A few years ago, reeling from plummeting record sales, record companies went after YouTube, demanding payment for streams of their material. They saw videos, suddenly, as potential sources of revenue. YouTube agreed to pay the record companies a tiny amount for each stream, but — here’s the crux of the problem — they pay only when the videos are viewed on YouTube’s own site.”
But possibly only until 2011. Ironically, that’s when the New York Times plans to put a paywall around its online content and prevent other sites from linking to it or quoting from it. Maybe this will pioneer a way of rescuing the global newspaper industry, according to one school of thought. Or maybe, goes the opposite view, Rupert Murdoch just doesn’t “get” the internet. Time will tell.
As a band, OK Go clearly do “get” it: see their open invitation to download the raw greenscreen footage from their video for WTF?, remix as much or little of it as you like and load it back onto YouTube. See http://www.okgo.net or click on image below
Saw this man busking under Hungerford Bridge on London’s South band this afternoon. Would be great to hear a musician of this calibre playing these instruments in a band context – his excellent blog can be found at http://hyperstimulation.wordpress.com
Crazy Screwed-Up Lady is the followup single to the astonishing Problems by COSMO JARVIS, which came out in November 2009. It’s due out as a single (from Wall Of Sound records) on March 22nd, though the record company has apparently declared the video lacks enough “impact” to get played on TV. if you like this, you’ll love Cosmo’s YouTube channel – which has something like 60 self-authored videos – and his recent work is quite stunning.
He’ll be my guest on 6 Music Introducing in the small hours of Monday Feb 15th 2010, shortly after 1.30am GMT, talking about the story behind this video among other things – and the show will be archived online for 7 days after transmission at the usual address: bbc.co.uk/6musicintroducing
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