If you live within swimming ange of the Isle of Wight, you’ll be interested in the following lineup for Bestival this year:
Dizzee Rascal / The Flaming Lips / Hot Chip / LCD Soundsystem / Gil Scott Heron / Chase & Status / Echo and the Bunnymen / Simian Mobile Disco / Delphic / Rolf Harris / Marc Almond / dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip / Ellie Goulding / Fat Freddy’s Drop / Flying Lotus / Four Tet / Kitty Daisy & Lewis / Stornoway / Tinie Tempah / Vitalic / The Cuban Brothers / Chilly Gonzales / Beardyman / Tunng / Hurts / Nathan Fake / The Gaslamp Killer / The Vegetable Orchestra / Ulrich Schnauss / The Twinkle Brothers / High Llamas / The Antlers / Archie Bronson Outfit / Beth Jeans Houghton / Mixhell / Glen Matlock / Samuel and the Dragon / The Japanese Popstars / The Lost Brothers / Hear We Go Magic / Goldhawks / Countryside Alliance Crew / Laura J Martin / A Genuine Freakshow / Bookhouse Boys / King Charles / Three Trapped Tigers / Worship / French Horn Rebellion / Sisters of Transistors / Spindle and Wit / Starless & Bible Black / The Boy Who Trapped The Sun / Telegraphs / Tim and Sam Band / Unicorn Kid
Notable high points for us will be Gil Scott-Heron and Fat Freddy’s Drop, and Beardyman’s always good value – hopefully a cold winter will mean good weather this Summer
Having just released what is always a difficult second album, “Jewellery Quarter”, The Twang have announced a tour of the UK later this year.
Five piece The Twang shot to the
top after the success of their first album “Love it When i feel Like” in 2007, which had solid singles like “Wide Awake” and “Either Way”. The Twang managed delicious reviews from NME who pegged them as the best band in the country for the same year. “Jewellery Quarter” has already received great reviews and has been compared by some people to the Happy Mondays, and some fans put them somewhere in between the streets and the stone roses.
Tour Venues include The Lead Mill in Sheffield, The Rescue Rooms in Nottingham and The M Club in Crewe including London, Manchester, Derby, Norwich and Glasgow to name a few. Tickets are on sale today (7 th August) and this weekend and start from £12.50.
Many musicians, both small and big, are tweeting away as we speak (i.e. ?uestlove of The Roots, Imogen Heap, Sonic Youth, etc.). The following is a list of five Twitter applications for musicians and bands aimed towards building a community around their music. For a link to the original source at IndieMusicTech.com, please click here.
1) twitpic: send photos from your mobile phone which will post links to them on twitter; a quick way to give your fans a visual look at what your band is currently doing (for example: recording, rehearsal, sound check, etc.)
2) twiddeo: similar to twitpic, but for video, allowing you to provide short video clips of your shows, interviews, touring adventures, etc.
3) twtpoll: ask your fans a question and get a response via twitter (e.g. what cities should we play next?)
4) twitzu: create an event (e.g. meet and greet) with description and location info and send it to your twitter followers and receive RSVPs from them
5) tweetchat – create rooms in Twitter to post tweets about a particular topic (e.g. your latest release)
There has been a lot of talk recently about music startups. iLike is on the table and looking for a buyers, as is Imeem. A couple months ago Tunecore received more funding and now it is rumoured that Band Metrics has received angel funding.
Funding was led by Allen Graber, who is a technology investor and entrepreneur. Band Metrics was a Techcrunch 50 2008 semi-finalise, and this is a great step forward for their company. Band Metrics provides a first-of-its-kind semantic web application for the music industry that collects, analyzes and displays artist’s dynamic popularity. The company’s music intelligence and analytics are achieved through patent pending technology which assists artists in understanding large amounts of data relative to their music, fans and shows, while also helping them manage their digital identity.