David Emery Online

Win

5 October 2008

Last week it was the annual Digital Music Awards; it’s probably a mark of how busy things have been recently that I haven’t written about it sooner…

The awards themselves are a rather awkward collision between an industry pats-on-backs type affair and a glitzy, Brit-awards style mainstream show. So, the latter half brings us a red carpet outside the Roundhouse, the Sugababes, Iglu and Hartly and a show on ITV2, and the former nets us awards like ‘Best Artist Promotion’ and ‘Best Mobile Campaign’ with everything being collected by the people behind the work, not the bands themselves (with the exception of Hadouken, who actually bothered to turn up).

As Jonas from Last.fm says this leads to a pretty odd atmosphere; the tackiness that you often encounter in certain sections of the industry without much of the redemption that comes in the form of ‘decent’ music (with the obvious exception of British Sea Power, who – as always – rocked). It’s a shame really that the pretence of glamour has to be there – most of the awards have a diverse bunch of entrants that deserve recognition; with the world of digital music moving and changing so quickly it’s good to highlight the most interesting experiments. It’s a shame that the Sugababes have to be there to do that.

We were up for 5 awards this year, and managed to take home 2 which is nice – one for Best Breakthrough Artist for Vampire Weekend and one for Best Artist for Radiohead:

Sadly they spared the TV audience my slightly rambled and apparently in-audable acceptance speech for Vampire Weekend – such a shame…