Music blogs are everywhere, here’s 20 I recommend you check out!
My Chemical Toilet
We Are Hunted
The Blue Walrus
The Pop Cop
Sweeping The Nation
The Daily Growl
A New Band A Day
Another Form of Relief
Fucking Dance
God Is In The TV Zine
Winston’s Zen
Illegal Tender
Muso’s Guide
I Really Love Music
Faded Glamour
Buzzin Music
Highway Five
There Goes The Fear
And Everyone’s A DJ
Shattered Satellite
Where do you go to get your music?
Brent Council are running a 6 week course starting Wednesday 3rd November, aimed at helping local residents get into social media.
Between 3pm – 5pm at Willesden Green Library, the one session a week programme looks to teach people about the benefits of blogging and Facebook, as well as developing practical skills such as getting the best images from your digital camera or selecting which mobile phone is best for you.
Places are limited and advance booking will be required. For more information call 020 8937 3400.
As ever, any education that can be offered to people who aren’t familiar with social media, the better – the fact that this is a council-led initiative makes it the more pleasing to see.
Camden’s Music Month continues apace tomorrow with a special session dedicated to helping aspiring musicians break into the industry.
Between 4pm and 6:30pm at the Council Chamber on Wednesday…
The event aims to provide access for those interested in working in the business to meet industry professionals. There will be speeches and Q&A sessions from a range of those in the know, including Andy Ross from OK Go and Serious Business Records, Lisa Paulon from Camden Crawl, Paul Kirkham from the Institute of Contemporary Music and Robert Rosenberg of The Who, Trinifold Management.
Attendees can also book a twenty minute one to one mentorship session with Rich Smith of Sony Music, Underwater, Platipus and Neo Records. Please note this opportunity is only open to those who live or work within the borough.
Click here to book your place.
I think this is a great initiative from Camden Council and it’s great to see so many figures from the industry prepared to get involved and share their knowledge and insights.
PSFK reported last week how a school in Minnesota has incorporated advertising onto school lockers.
The exercise is being carried out as a way to bring in some extra revenue, and this is a critical issue in the US at the moment.
The release of Waiting For Superman, a film following the lives of five children who are subject to a lottery when it comes to their future in the US education system, has put the spotlight on the frailties of the way it is currently run and sparked debates up and down the country.
That schools are accepting advertising, is nothing new.
There have been many instances of schools having branding within their walls, and the affects that this can have on children are well documented.
What is new here is the overt nature of the advert and that they have been forced into this situation through the dire state of their finances.
The Star Tribune reports:
On Nov. 1, the school board is slated to decide whether it will allow the ads on up to 10 percent of the available surfaces in all of the district’s seven schools. That includes lockers, walls and floors. The take for the district? $184,000 a year.
St. Francis schools’ Saxton stressed that the advertising initiative is a one-year experiment.
“In the spring of next year, we’ll look at the revenue stream generated and make sure it wasn’t a distraction to learning,” he said. “If there are problems, we’re obviously not going to continue it, but if they become kind of a normal, everyday deal, it could just be part of the culture.”
Should young children be so blatantly exposed to advertising to pay for their education?
The Frieze Art Fair came to London’s Regent’s park last week, showcasing some of the newest works from upcoming and established artists.
However, at £25 a pop for tickets, Ghostontoast and I decided instead to wander around the sculpture garden that accompanied the exhibition, instead of joining the long queues!
The variety of work on show was excellent, with diverse structures, shapes and colours adding to a fine autumnal stroll round the garden of the park.
My particular favourite was a big blown up balloon with Bert from Sesame Street on one side, annotated with the word ‘not’, and an image of a man who looks suspiciously like Jesus, labelled with the word ‘hot’.
It would have been great to actually go into the fair itself, and the high entry fee only goes to continue the view of art as an elitist interest that is not welcoming to outsiders, despite their wanting to consume and become involved, in whatever capacity they can.
The price was in stark contrast with the gorgeous surroundings of regent’s park, which was, literally, priceless.
In Monday’s New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell aims a volley of his undoubted intellect towards Clay Shirky, social media and the people who use the channel.
Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article dismisses social media as: “a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger.”
Throughout the piece, Gladwell takes a series of case studies looking at the effect social media can have offline, critically analyses the lot and concludes that despite the positive use of personal networks linked through the digital sphere, “A networked, weak-tie world is good at things like helping Wall Streeters get phones back from teen-age girls.”
Of Clay Shirky, Gladwell says:
Shirky considers this model of activism an upgrade. But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger.
Funnily enough, it is the Guardian’s Xenia Rimmer who I think gets to the heart of the argument by pointing out:
“In an – ironic – online forum that followed the furore he had created, Gladwell argued last Thursday that what drove him crazy about “the digerati” was that they “refuse to accept the fact that there is a class of social problems for which there is no technological solution.
“Look, technology is going to solve the energy problem. I’m convinced of it. But technology does not and cannot change the underlying dynamics of ‘human’ problems: it does not make it easier to love or to motivate or to dream or convince.”
In an argument that will run and run, he seemed to be inverting the wisdom of a social theorist from a previous age: the message is not only about the medium.”
The point for me is that social networks allow people to connect and discuss ideas – it’s a starting point for people to find information, learn and have the opportunity to make a considered choice about whether they should get involved in a cause.
Social media is not the answer, but it can be the starting point for education about important issues, from any side of any argument.
It might not start a revolution, but digital channels can be used to start the mobilisation process through information sharing and awareness raising.
One of the biggest differences in the media here in Washington, and that of London, is the prevalence of social media on broadcast channels.
On Friday, during a wusa9 news report, Google trends was cited as a source when identifying the awareness of a Democratic rally that was due to take place on Saturday.
The point was that as Google trends hadn’t picked up a large volume of search data, nobody had heard of it.
Most news anchors share their Twitter handles and blog URLs, including the sports hosts – it’s the exceptional few who don’t.
This is happening a lot more in the UK, but you get the impression that it seen as a chore.
But it was that use of Google trends that really caught my eye and made me realise that in many ways, our media are still stuck in the traditional ways of identifying and reporting interest and zeitgeist.
Imagine Huw Stephens saying, “And according to Google Trends, the latest TFL strike has caused the most consternation with the general public”.
It simply won’t happen until traditional media casts off its hang ups and becomes more dynamic and tuned in to new tools and technologies that can help them offer another point of view and subsequently a better service to the public.
Direct to Fan Marketing, or D2F, is one of the drums I like to hit on occasion. I put together this deck on it, let me know what you think.
