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June 11, 2009

A rocking good day at New Music Labs

Krause celebrates her pre-release album promo I spent the day at the offices of New Music Labs in Groningen. The morning was spent catching up with emails and phone calls, but by lunchtime, there was a steady stream of visitors bearing problems, questions and gifts. Krause (above), who has a record deal with Sony, came to chat. I've consulted with her in the past, and she gave me a copy of the CD promo she's managed to produce so far under that contract. We had a lot of good ideas, and came up with some ways in which she could develop her online strategy, and I'm going to be working with her through More Canals to handle that side of things.

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June 11, 2009

More stuff

I work in a research unit called Interactive Cultures It's based in the Birmingham School of Media, which is at Birmingham City University I write a blog about the independent music business and how it can thrive online. That's called New Music Strategies I set up a website called Music Think Tank with my friend Bruce. Lots of clever people write about the music industries there. I'm writing a book about popular music culture in the digital age. It's called Deleting Music I'm writing another book about how humans adapt in the digital environment. It's called Now We Are Different I run a whisky blog with my friend Clutch, simply called Dubber and Clutch We do online tastings via Twitter: @twhisky My friend Stef and I started a community website for making wishes. It's called I So Wish We also invented silent radio via Twitter. Naturally, it's called Twadio And we started a website where people can make Top 5 lists. That's called 5alist We're working on a project with composer Nitin Sawhney called Aftershock These are my photos on Flickr These are my videos on Vimeo and Youtube This is my music on Last.fm This is my Linked In profile My bookmarks on Delicious

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June 11, 2009

In Leeuwarden

Lykle, Marco and Niels in Leeuwarden Spent most of yesterday in the city of Leeuwarden, meeting with students and other interested parties at the Academie Voor Popcultuur, where Niels Aalberts, Marco Raaphorst and I talked as a group and with individuals throughout the afternoon. Niels is an independent A&R/Manager who represents Kyteman (amazingly popular trumpeter who leads a hip hop orchestra in the Netherlands) and Marco is a composer, Creative Commons activist and sound designer for Propellerhead. Both are well-known music industry bloggers in Holland. The session was really great, though of course, everyone had to speak in English because my Dutch extends to about four general purpose phrases, which wouldn't have been very helpful at all.

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June 10, 2009

In Groningen

Ard & Lykle at the New Music Labs office. I'm spending this morning working in the office of New Music Labs, Lopend Vuur and De Ondernemers - three inter-related businesses in online music, design and promotion based in Groningen in the North of Holland. I'm over here to consult and speak at the Academy of Popular Culture in Leeuwarden - not too far from here - organised by the New Music Labs guys. That's this afternoon and this evening. The moment I got off the train yesterday afternoon, it was straight into the bike hire shop and then Lykle and I were off, in true Dutch style, to the Labs office.

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June 7, 2009

I'm an atheist - glad to meet you

In the past week or so, I've spent a good deal of time in the company of some devout Christians. It's not something I ordinarily do - not because I go out of my way to avoid them, I just don't tend to move in those circles. Of course, when you start out not realising that the people you're hanging out with are Christians, and then it slowly begins to dawn on you that they are, you quickly start to go back through your mind trying to recall whether you've said anything that could be construed as offensive. At least, that's what I do. But partly because the people I was with were cool, interesting, creative and intelligent people, and partly because we'd gone out for a drink and it was an interesting pub conversation, the caution on my part gave way to a bit of open debate. In fact, it put me in a position where I had to really revisit what I think about God, religion and church. And revisiting it has brought further clarity.

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June 5, 2009

Lies like these

I thought I'd lay off posting music videos here for a bit, but I thought since I shot this one myself, it was a good idea to put it up. I'm in Manchester at a music industry conference called Un-Convention. It's one of those events where you know quite a few of the people involved, and the ones you don't, you get to know quite quickly. Mostly DIY and grassroots music - 'unsigned' bands, if you like (though I prefer 'independent') - and music on very small labels. After the last band played last night, a bunch of us went across to the pizzeria / chip shop across the road for a bite to eat. My Belfast cousin Tracy, and Brad from Bolton band Merchandise were talking about Brad's album and how that was coming along. 'Nearly done - just have some mastering to do. Finished a video for the first single, but we're not going to do any more. Don't have the budget for it.' 'Let's make one right now,' I said.

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May 31, 2009

Fred Dagg - We Don't Know How Lucky We Are

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYvMeT2GC14&hl=en&fs=1] One New Zealand Music Video a day for NZ Music Month... the last one in the series, in fact. If you want to see more New Zealand music videos, there's a site that specialises in exactly that: NZ Music Videos.

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May 29, 2009

Mark de Clive-Lowe at the Black Cat

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWnB_yhoxbw&hl=en&fs=1] One New Zealand Music Video a day for NZ Music Month.

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May 29, 2009

DD Smash - Whaling (not Satellite Spies - Destiny in Motion)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyqnCfquPP8&hl=en&fs=1] Okay - now this is weird. I had wanted today's NZ Music video to be 'Destiny in Motion' by Satellite Spies, but there's a copyright claim stopping it being played on YouTube. "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by S.E.R.L. Science Trustee Ltd. and Keith G. Moyle." - Google/Wikipedia says they're former members of the band. Seems they're reforming, releasing a new album and touring in 2010. Without Mark Loveys, the frontman. If Destiny in Motion is outside your cultural frame of reference, it was an 80s synthpop hit in NZ, followed up by a couple of singles that were apparently sabotaged by a distribution screw-up. It just so happens that Mark is my sister's partner (yes, New Zealand is that small...), and so I'll see if I can find out more about this. He sang, and (my understanding was) wrote Destiny in Motion. It's a classic piece of kiwi pop culture, and having it removed from YouTube during NZ Music Month is a real shame. Especially when I'm trying to blog about it. One for Deleting Music, perhaps? I've gone with Dobbyn's masterpiece instead. Kia ora. One New Zealand Music Video a day for NZ Music Month.

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May 28, 2009

The Chills - I Love My Leather Jacket

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKWkK1tJxdw&hl=en&fs=1] One New Zealand Music Video a day for NZ Music Month.

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