Football League Search For World Cup Bloggers

The Football League are launching a nationwide search to find bloggers representing their local clubs to publish their thoughts throughout the World Cup in South Africa.

Each Football League club blogger will be given the chance to have their posts aggregated onto a microsite during the competition.

To enter, all you need to do is submit your “Funniest World Cup Moment” in 150-200 words to blog2010 (@) football-league.co.uk stating who you support and your contact details.

They’re after submissions that are:

* Funny
* Displaying a knowledge of football
* Ensuring adequate spelling and correct use of grammar
* From a supporter of the club

Individuals must be over 18 and terms and conditions apply. The closing date for the competition will be 10th May 2010.

It’s great to see the Football League getting involved with content generation from fans of football clubs up and down the country during what wil be (probably) quite a traumatic time for England and the other countries playing at the tournament!

Tunited

Tunited.com

Tunited is a Midge Ure founded independent music community.

Tunited’s four objectives sound rather appealing:

Make music together online, sell direct to fans and get paid more

Find new music to Love

Share it and help shape the scene

Change the Music industry for good

I could buy into this…

* Tunited will provide a platform for independent artists where they are not in competition with the power of the major labels. It will be a level playing field where artists are not judged on which label they are signed to or even if they are signed to a label at all, but they are judged on the quality of their music and how they engage with their fans.

* Tunited will be a hive to stoke creativity and encourage collaboration and community between music makers and music lovers, meaning more music and more choice for listeners.

* We believe in a meritocracy where the cream rises to the top, not a system where few are the arbitrators of the tastes of the many. Tunited will give music the chance to filter up our systems organically. That way, the best music will be recognised, regardless of the size of their marketing budgets or charm of their pluggers.

* We will equip artists with basic business principles, enabling them to make the best, most cost-effective choices to promote their music and empowering them to move forward.

* We believe music should be liberated, not free. We will explain to listeners what the true cost of music is, helping them to decide which bands they want to invest their time, money and passion into.

* We are committed to seeing musicians being paid for the music they produce. Tunited will be investing in artists by giving them 100% of profits from their downloads – a rate better than iTunes. There are other companies out there who promise to pay through 100% of royalties earned on iTunes, while charging you for the service. Tunited will not make a single penny of profit from downloads sold on our site.

* We, at Tunited, believe in a fairer deal for artists through transparency. There are no secrets here. We’ll let you know the why, where, how and who of everything on our site and give you a context to place it in. For example, we will be showing you where every penny goes of a 79p download.

Artists are fairly rewarded for their work, and the open sharing ethic is of course something I’m very keen to see more of. The claim that artists will receive a greater deal than iTunes is interesting, especially given the increasing competition to the service as a distribution platform.

The one worry of course, is that the growth of D2F services such as this may dilute the potential audience for new unsigned artists which begs the question, will we see a Spotify equivalent emerge for the unsigned scene?

The service goes live tomorrow (April 29th) and to keep upto date with what’s going on, check out the Tunited blog.

Like all good social media practitioners, Tunited are also on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Myspace.

Building Relationships With Bloggers

The PR and blogger relationship is something i’ve written about at great length previously, whether it’s on engagement, paid-for conversation or developing relationships with communities.

The dynamic fascinates me and it’s something that i’m constantly exploring.

I was lucky enough to be invited to talk with The Londonist’s Matt Brown on exactly this subject on PR Moment TV.

You can see the re-run of the webchat on the PR Moment TV website.

It was a great discussion to be a part of and I hope that it provided some interesting points which I hope were of value.

Google Government Data Privacy Requests

Google has published data showing which countries’ governments most often ask for data to be removed from Google indexing or for information to be shared.

Brazil, intriguingly, comes top of both lists. It should be noted that these requsts are raw data and not as a proportion of those with Internet access in each country.

China is the main notable absentee, with no data available.

The use of this data is very much in its infancy, but it’s interestnig that Google are happy to share this with the wider public.

Data Removal Requests

Brazil 291
Germany 188
India 142
United States 123
South Korea 64
United Kingdom 59
Italy 57
Argentina 42
Spain 32
Australia 17
Canada 16
Armenia <10
Austria <10
Belgium <10
Cambodia <10
Colombia <10
Estonia <10
Finland <10
France <10
Indonesia <10
Ireland <10
Israel <10
Japan <10
Liechtenstein <10
Lithuania <10
Macedonia <10
Malaysia <10
Malta <10
Mexico <10
Netherlands <10
New Zealand <10
Norway <10
Pakistan <10
Peru <10
Russia <10
Singapore <10
Slovenia <10
Sweden <10
Switzerland <10
Taiwan <10
Thailand <10
Turkey <10

Data Requests

Brazil 3663
United States 3580
United Kingdom 1166
India 1061
France 846
Italy 550
Germany 458
Spain 324
Australia 155
Argentina 98
Poland 86
Belgium 67
Netherlands 67
Singapore 62
Portugal 45
Japan 44
South Korea 44
Switzerland 42
Canada 41
Israel 30

Track In The Box

Track In The Box is a free daily music newsletter that helps you cut through the multitude of music blogs and aggregators out there, to help you discover (and sometimes rediscover) great bands.

It’s not often i’ll copy and paste press releases verbatim, but I thought this was worth sharing in it’s entirety.

Track In The Box will give you a track in your box every day (your inbox that is). But these aren’t just picked by your average Joe, they are tracks picked by trusty music-types including Will Street (Chess Club), Jemima Kiss (Guardian), Michael Lewin (Notion Magazine), Jon Brookes (The Charlatans), Paul Bliss (Blissfields Festival) and Tom Hannan (RockFeedback). With future tracks to be picked by the likes of Fred Fellowes (Secret Garden Party), it’s an effortless way of receiving something new in your inbox without you so much as having to trawl the blogs.

The Green House Group created Track In The Box in November as a way of sharing music with friends. According to Green House Group Dirtector, Brittney Bean, “we were always being asked by friends to recommend them songs and new bands, so we decided to start a mailing list where we sent one great track each day – we figured we might as well make it public, and then even offer exclusives and free downloads to everyone.

“There’s so much great music, both new and old, and it’s really fun for us to discover great music all the time so we wanted to share that with other people,” she continues. “There’s also nothing better than finding an old track that you love and haven’t listened to for ages. If we can support the bands that we love and think deserve exposure, then that’s really great as well.” – Green House Group.

Past tracks have been by artists such as Gaggle (Transgressive), Alan Pownall (Mercury), Lulu and the Lampshades, Scary Mansion, Not Squares, Windmill (Melodic). Dont worry if you have been missing out up until now, a number of these great tracks are also available to download for free on their website.

You can start receiving a track in your box every day at www.trackinthebox.co.uk, and follow them on Twitter

Digital Economy Act

Here’s the Digital Economy Act in full as a pdf (it’s 60 pages so i’m not going to publish the entire thing).

And in summary:

The Bill implements aspects of Government policy on digital media set out in the ‘Digital Britain’ White Paper published in June 2009.

Key areas

* requires Ofcom to report on communications infrastructure and media content
* imposes obligations on internet service providers to reduce online copyright infringement
* allows the Secretary of State to intervene in internet domain name registration
* requires Channel Four to provide public service content on a range of media
* provides more flexibility over the licensing of Channel 3 and Channel 5 services
* modifies the licensing regime to facilitate switchover to digital radio
* allows variation of the public service provision in Channel 3 and 5 licences
* provides Ofcom with additional powers in relation to electromagnetic spectrum access
* extends the range of video games that are subject to age-related classification
* includes non-print formats in the public lending right payment scheme

Following amendments in the House of Commons Committee Stage, the Bill no longer provides for the appointment of providers of regional and local news. Provisions in relation to extending copyright licensing and orphan works have also been removed.

Pledge Music to work with Underground Heroes

Pledge Music, a Direct to Fan music company, has signed a deal with UK punk group Underground Heroes to “offer fans the chance to be part of the making and release of their brand new album, alongside a wide range of exciting premium incentives which include unprecedented access to the band & exclusive merchandise.”

Alex from Anorak got in touch with this, an following my blog post a couple of days ago about D2F, I thought it was worth sharing.

The press release says:

Since launching last year Pledge Music has already initiated hugely successful campaigns for, among others, Jack Bruce, Duke Special, Madina Lake, and Danish superstar Tina Dico, all of whom received an overwhelming response from their fans.

Underground Heroes, who are embarking on an extensive UK tour throughout May, will also be playing a ‘pledgers only’ show later in the year and fans joining in this campaign will have access to a ‘pledgers only updates’ page on the Pledge Music website throughout the making of the album where the band will be sharing exclusive updates, messages, videos, demos, rough mixes, blogs and photos.

The band has also committed to giving a percentage of any monies they raise via Pledge Music to charity and have nominated the Teenage Cancer Trust to be the beneficiaries.

Given the relevance of this paradigm shift in music marketing, and the importance I think this can have within traditional media communications channels, it’s a great example of how simply the theory can be applied.

I want to see consumer brands take on this approach and to give more back to the people who support them, whether they buy their products or not – it’s about adding value at every stage of the consumption cycle.

The Underground Heroes pledge campaign is now live and interested pledgers should visit www.pledgemusic.com for more information.

SEO Myth Buster Event

On Friday April 9th, thupr are hosting a meetup to discuss SEO.

According to the press release, conversation topics will range from:

… basic on-line PR tactics such as on-line press releases, linking and syndicated content, through to the ethics of issues such as ‘pay per post’ and the influence of activity such as PPC/Google Adwords.

Jointly organised by PR consultant Claire Thompson, Waves PR, and blogger and digital marketer Murray Newlands, the event aims to provide a ‘myth busting’, open, environment to sharpen people’s understanding of SEO, particularly anyone is who selling their writing skills, from PR people to bloggers.

Judith Lewis will also be delivering a keynote.

I think this is an interesting way to share ideas and experiences about SEO, and the way that it’s importance has changed, is changing and will continue to change.

Date: Friday April 9, 2010
Time: 2pm-6pm
Venue: Centre for Creative Collaboration (London, close to Kings Cross, London)
To attend: sign up on the thupr meetups site (This event is free to attendees, although the venue will dictate limits to numbers)

Future events include:

Friday, May 14: a full day session on content creation and sharing
Friday, June 25: cleaning up communications

Music PR Agencies

Music PR is a great way to indulge your love of music whilst also being involved in PR and the communications space – I started out in music PR and it did me no harm at all.

I’ve had a few requests recently to to pull together a list of UK music PR agencies, so here it is (ye ask, and ye shall get).

Please feel free to add others in the comments section below and i’ll update as and when as i’m aware there are many other agencies who have a presence in the music scene.

I’ve linked to their about pages, listed their location and some of the stuff they do.

Astar PR (formerly Zest PR) – where I got my first break!
London based – indie, classical, festivals, venues, digital, traditional

AMP Publicity
London based – traditional, events, brands

Anorak (formerly Scruffy Bird pr)
London based – indie, rock, digital, traditional

Ask Me PR (formerly Red Alert Promotions)
Manchester based – indie, rock, digital, traditional

Bullet PR
Brighton based – events, consumer, traditional, mainstream bands

Co-operative Music
London based – indie, pop, dance

Covert PR
London based – indie, record labels, pop

Cypher PR
London based – indie, digital, soul, jazz

Darling Dept
London based – indie, digital

Decade PR (Independent arm of Quite Great Music PR)
Cambridge based – indie, unsigned

Dog Day Press
London based – indie, pop, digital

FreemanPR
London based – indie, rock, digital, traditional, electro, folk, trip hop, shoegaze

Frukt (thanks to Marcus)
London based – indie, rock, digital, events, experiential, brands

G Promo
Shropshire based – alt. country, Americana, bluegrass, power pop, roots rock, garage rock

Hackford Jones PR
London based – mainstream, pop, events, traditional

Hall or Nothing PR
London based – mainstream, pop, indie, dance

Immediate Future
London based – record labels, digital

Lucid (thanks to Marc Lewis)
London based – indie, pop, digital

Punk PR
Manchester based – DJ, indie, mainstream

Outside Organisation
London based – pop, mainstream, events, TV, awards, crisis management

Outpost Media
London based – events, digital, bands, festivals

Paddy Forwood PR
Dorset based – alt-country, indie, rock, electronica, folk, blues

Purple PR
London based – mainstream, indie, pop, dance

Quite Great Music PR
Cambridge based – blues & jazz, books, classical, country, funk, soul, indie, digital, pop, MOR, dance, rock, soundtracks, DVDs, world music

Rush PR
London based – artists, organisations, TV, magazines

Sainted PR
London based – indie, pop, traditional, digital

Savage PR
London based – indie, dance, pop, traditional, digital

Slice PR (thanks to Marcus)
London based – indie, digital, events

Spring PR
London based – events, digital, festivals

Stoked PR
London based – mainstream pop, indie, brands, artist management

Supersonic PR
London based – artist publicity, traditional PR, mainstream news

Taylor Herring
London based – digital, entertainment, musicals, classical, pop

Toast PR
London, Manchester, Nottingham based – consumer, traditional, mainstream, pop

Triad Publicity
London based – indie, digital

Vision
London based – radio plugging, traditional, dance, indie, rock, urban, electronica

Direct To Fan Marketing

Direct To Fan Marketing, or D2F, is an increasingly prevalent way for bands to reach people who like their music cheaply and with a real sense that they may just buy the band’s record as a result using emerging social technologies.

Direct To Fan Marketing is a strategy for bands to talk directly to their fans (hence the name) through the use of emerging, and increasingly mainstream, social technologies and social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook or even Foursquare.

The way the bands go about this will vary: from offering free downloads by sending an e-mail to fans on their mailing list, or sharing a tweet with a link to a video with their fans by including specific fans of their streams using @xxx, for example. The idea is to give fans the most personal experience that they can get, with the marketing BS stripped out.

“Isn’t this just customer marketing?” I hear you cry. No, the nuance here is the shift from customer to fan.

A customer is someone who already buys, or already has bought, your product.

A fan is someone who is using their band or brand to define their identity, but may not actually participate or buy the product. A good example of this is someone who signs up as a fan of Greenpeace on Facebook, but doesn’t attend any rallies or leave messages on their wall.

My friend and trouble-maker in chief Elliot Pearson, has written extensively about D2F marketing from a band’s perspective, and this has got me thinking as to whether this same model can be effectively applied to traditional consumer brands as part of a PR and marketing strategy.

PR is the crudest form of influencer marketing, you find the journalist who will write about your product and influence the most people. Brands love this as it gives them, in theory, huge exposure often on a national level. It also helps that column inches can be compared against the size of adverts and you can answer: how many people may have seen that article? How many key messages were included? Did we see a spike in sales after the piece?

Social media on the other hand, takes on a form customer marketing. In part this is sharing content with a brand’s customers, and on the other hand it is performing a customer service function. The problem here is that it is difficult to measure – a cool piece of content may not make someone buy your brand’s product as a result.

I believe that we have an opportunity to integrate Direct To Fan Marketing as part of a social media strategy.

By aligning yourself with a brand, such as the Greenpeace example above, you are opting in to receive their communications via your Facebook news feed. This demonstrates you are hapy to hear what is going on in their world.

So why not take this a step further? If a brand knows that someone is a fan on Facebook (how many times more will you hear ‘we need a million fans in a month’ from unsuspecting clients – it’s about who, not how many, remember), the brand knows they want to receive information. The brand can use this nugget to speak with the fans directly, and offer them something in return for their interest in their product or service, be it content or a night out.

This allows fans to become involved with a brand they want to actively show they are involved with, and as a result may go and buy their first product, or strengthen their affinity with the brand.

How is this measurable? We can measure pretty much anything, but remember, that it is what we measure that is important.

I’d start by looking at:

Interactions (both positive and negative) and shifting perceptions (percentage increase in positive comments in proportion to number of total comments)

Demand for event attendance (if you have 50 places and 50 people come to your first event, but have 75 places for a follow up event and 150 people want to come, that’s associated brand involvement trebled!)

Content shares (number of times similar content is shared on Twitter or Facebook)

Downloads of freely available content (MP3s or viedeos)

D2F requires greater resource than customer or influencer marketing as it means taking time to become a trusted and credible member of the fans community. However, it is more worthwhile as it will help to cultivate long lasting fan – brand relationships, which will in turn, lead to more sales over a longer sustained period of time.

What do you think?