BBC Introducing: Fresh On The Net shows (2007-2012)
My first BBC Introducing: Fresh On The Net shows began on 6 Music in October 2007 and over the next four and a half years we gave national airplay to over ten thousand tracks by independent artists across a wide variety of genres.
In April this year Fresh On The Net moved online here as an independent music blog, while on 6 Music we launched its radio replacement, the BBC Introducing Mixtape: an hour-long programme rammed with new music that’s downloadable in full every week.
In those eight months we’ve given further exposure to another 600+ tracks by emerging artists (many of which I first heard when they were submitted here for our Fresh On The Net Listening Post) and this weekend I’ll be playing a selection of them on BBC Radio 6 Music.
There’s so much to love about so many of them that it was painful to whittle my favourites down to a manageable list. As a result we’ve ended up with three hoursworth to try and pack into my Saturday show this weekend, and a further hour of tunes you can download and keep in our end-of-year Mixtape.
If there’s any justice in the world, a good number of these bands and songwriters will break through to a wider audience in 2013 but, in a way, future fame is beside the point. Sales and media exposure depend on many factors that have nothing to do with music – starting with luck. Business backing and industry contacts may no longer be essential, but nevertheless some artists will always be better at marketing themselves than others. And – as we all know – those aren’t always the ones who make the most interesting music.
However everyone we’ll be playing this weekend will be worth following in the next year – in my opinion – simply because every one of them produces interesting work. Some might well be celebrities in the making – but most are simply driven by a mission to make their own uncompromising music and see where it leads.
Bear in mind too that we only have enough airtime to play a fraction of the creative talent we’ve enjoyed here in all its diverse glory – fast, furious, fun, funky, fuzzy, hifi, lofi, bleak, uplifting, oddball and tender – from sparse to fully orchestrated and all points in between. We hope you’ll subscribe to our RSS feed here at FOTN as well as the BBC Introducing Mixtape – and join us for more musical discoveries in the year ahead.
– Saturday night show tonight (29th December) on BBC 6 Music tonight at 9pm.
– The BBC Introducing Mixtape special on Sun night/Mon morning at 2am.
– Both shows will be available on BBC iPlayer for 7 days
– Full tracklist + download links from 3am Monday (31st December) here.
Fresh on the net is a very rare thing on the web.
Well done.
Love
Reggie
A’right Tom and everyone involved wi FOTN. We want to wish you all a’ the best fir the new year and hope 2013 is the dugs baws. Cheers everyone, Have a good one. Steve an Rich. X
Thanks Tom for including us on 2012’s list, it made us incredibly proud. Thanks to the Listening Post and it’s listeners, it’s done so much for us in 2012…see you in 2013!!
Wow!
Just like to say an enormous thank you to tom & everyone who’s supported us this year. We’re currently sunning ourselves in Tenerife, but we’ll be back before you know it, or at least once its stopped raining back home!
A huge thank you to Tom Robinson and the fresh net crew for your support in 2012 XX