David Emery OnlineEscape (Great)
So the Great Escape 2008 has well and truly been done. It was unsurprisingly great fun; the music was good, my panel talk was very interesting and stimulating and it was great to meet up with lots of people (even if I did dash back to London a little early so didn’t spend quite enough time with any of them).
Of the bands seen, I think Fanfarlo and The Futureheads at Digital on Thursday were probably the highlights – Fanfarlo’s indie pop gets better every time I see it and it was great to see a band like Futureheads in such a small, intimate venue.
As always, here are some photos – you can see all of them on Flickr:
Peaches Geldof and me
One of the more interesting opportunities that cropped up recently – and contributed to the distinctly lax attitude I’ve seemingly been taking recently with decent length blog posts – was to photograph behind the scenes at the shoot for the new Nick Caves and the Bad Seeds video. It was unsurprisingly immense fun, even more so because not only did it have the aforementioned Nick C. and co in it, but a host of other famous names including Beth Orton, Will Self, that guy from Green Wing, Andy from EastEnders and Peaches Geldof:
That is by far and away my favourite photo I’ve taken, and I’m still trying to get over the oddness of being in the ladies loos at a seedy club in Soho on a Sunday afternoon taking photos of Peaches Geldof…
I’ve taken this opportunity to add a Photography section to this...
Read more ➔Friend Connect And The End Of The Fragmentation Era
Google’s Friend Connect – and the whole Data Portability thing – seem like they could potentially be a good solution for the whole ‘too many social networks’ problem. It could also mean that niche social networks (for a band, for example) might actually start making sense if they’re just an extension of your presence on a different (bigger) network.
Visit ➔Twitter revenue
Ethan talks about using Twitter as a $1/month private fanclub news source, which is kind-of interesting but I have a real distaste for the whole ‘monetized fanclub’ thing which a few people have tried (Bloc Party and the Mighty Boosh both come to mind).
Surely the way to reward your hardcore fans isn’t to try and charge them for it?
Visit ➔It's all about the music, yeah?
To make a change from simply going on about the music business I thought it’s high time to feature some actual music. That, and it means I don’t need to write much.
First up is the rather stupendously wonderful Bon Iver. I would normally flounder around trying to come up with words good enough to do him justice, but I know I won’t manage it so I won’t. Just go and buy the album.
Next we have Magistrates, who seem to be getting a little bit of hype right now, due to a certain Radio 1 DJ whose name rhymes with Dane Towe. The hype is more then justified, though, as they sound something like a cross between Klaxons and Vampire Weekend – and if that combination isn’t going to generate hype then what is?
The Magistrates – The Inbetweens
Having filled my credibility-o-meter, I will now – in one fell swoop – undo all my hard work by talking about much maligned Reading band Does It Offend You, Yeah? For some reason – other then having a stupid name – they seem to have got a bit of a bad reputation,...
Read more ➔Good Leaks
So last week I talked about the Coldplay free track giveaway. Since then it’s gone on to be downloaded – for free – over 2 million times. This week they’ve stopped the free download, and started selling it on iTunes.
So, you’d think that with over 2 million people having the song already – in essentially the same format as you get from iTunes – would dent the sales a bit, right? After all, isn’t this akin to the biggest, most publicised leak ever?
It’s currently Number 1 in the iTunes charts, ahead of the likes of Madonna, Sam Sparrow and Wiley, and looks set to go top 10 in the singles chart tomorrow on download sales alone.
I think you would say that’s pretty successful, don’t you think? Yes Coldplay are a big band and the strategy relies on their built up brand recognition, but how many more examples of free track promotion working are we going to have to have before we can put this ridiculous fear of leaks behind us?
In contrast, I think we can conclude that we’re almost over the ‘album distribution revolution’ before it’s even really begin. The Nine Inch Nails album (as talked about...
Read more ➔Pitchfork Feature: Radiohead: "Nude RE/MIX"
Ok, I realise I’ve gone on about this a little too much, but this is a nice little summary of the whole thing and highlights some of the best mixes (although I’m sure there are still some hidden gems waiting to be found).
Visit ➔Mirror's Edge Trailer
Mirror’s Edge is a fully first person action game coming soon for the Playstation 3, and it seems to have finally cracked the ‘floating camera with no legs’ problem most first person perspective games seem to suffer from:
Visit ➔