The UK based Spotify rival, We7 has launched a new music streaming mobile app, available as a free download from the iTunes store. The app appears to be working on the We7’s Premium account, although from the 1st March it will only work for those who sign up for the £9.99 a month Premium+ account.
We7’s product allows users to take advantage of an offline mode where in areas of little or no reception, they will still be able to listen to music that has been cached to the handset – a feature similar to that of the Spotify app.
There is a special offer on We7’s current Premium PC based service that is advert free and is available until the 1st May for £3.99 a month (normal price £4.99). The Premium+ service will feature ad free listening on both PC and mobile and will be available on both the iPhone and Android devices. We7 say they will be making the app available to Blackberry devices at some point.
Following Warner Music’s comment that steaming services were “clearly not positive for the industry”, Poker PR believes it will be the premium services that will be used to keep the record companies happy and provide the money to keep the music industry alive.
Kasabian and Muse both picked up two awards at last night’s Shockwave NME awards. The awards – originally started way back in 1953 – were last night held at the O2 Academy Brixton in London where Kasabian, Marina And The Diamonds, Lily Allen, The Big Pink, Hole and The Maccabees all performed live. 3.6 million votes were cast this year, “proving that music fans are as passionate as ever” according to NME editor Krissi Murison.
Kasabian picked up ‘Best Album’ and ‘Best Album Artwork’ for ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’, while Muse scooped the ‘Best British Band’ award, beating Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Biffy Clyro and Kasabian, as well as receiving the ‘Best Website’ prize.
Oasis walked away empty handed despite being up for three awards including best video, for ‘Falling Down’, while their 90s rivals, Blur pick up a well-deserved award for their reunion gig in Hyde Park last summer.
Other awards included:
Best Solo Artist – Jamie T
Best New Band – Bombay Bicycle Club
Best Live Band – Arctic Monkeys
Best Festival – (shock horror) Glastonbury
Best Dressed – Lady Gaga
Worst Dressed- Lady Gaga
Rage Against The Machine were named the ‘Heroes of the Year’ for keeping X-Factor winner Joe McElderry off the Christmas number one spot.
Social Media was given a positive nod when Lily Allen received the ‘Giving it Back Award’ for her Twitter ticket treasure hunt where fans had the opportunity to find free tickets to her world tour.
Paul Weller was the recipient of the ‘Godlike Genius’ award and closed the event with six songs from his long and productive career.
With a month to go ‘til WMC2010 we pick our top parties from this year’s event. Undoubtedly the most important in the dance music calendar in the states, the Miami’s Winter Music Conference will be celebrating its 25th year in 2010. Originally started as a meeting of just 80 dance music insiders, it’s become an essential stop for artists, partygoers, promoters, and labels serving around 60,000 visitors during one week. Here are the highlights:
Tuesday 23rd March
Air London & 8 Bit Records presents…
Nick Curly (Cecille/8 Bit), Simon Baker (2020 Vision/Cocoon), Glimpse (Planet E/Cadenza), and Oxia (8 Bit) are among the acts playing at the event, taking over both rooms at the Electric Pickle.
Wednesday 24th March
Credit To The Edit with Greg Wilson.
Back to the Electric Pickle for, Poker favourite, Greg Wilson. This is Greg’s first set at the conference and he will be playing an exclusive 4 hour set. Guests to be announced.
Thursday 25th March
If Carlsberg did parties… Steve Lawler, M.A.N.D.Y., Tiefschwarz, and Radioslave are among the list of DJ’s playing at the event with arguably one of the best line ups of the conference.
Friday 26th March
Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso & Friends.
After a massive year in 2009 Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso of the famed Swedish House Mafia head to Mansion and are joined by their friends An21 and Kim Fai. Featuring a special guest appearance by Florence and the Machine.
Saturday 27th March
With a 7 hour set from Roger Sanchez, and Poker friends Prok and Fitch playing this event at the luxurious SET Nightclub, this is one not to be missed.
Sunday 28th March
Danny Tenaglia Closing Pool Party.
Call us traditionalist but there is no better way to end the WMC than at Danny’s famous closing party. With a melting pot of clubbers, hipsters from all over the world, DJmag at the Shelborne closes their pool with the best of the best.
This is Poker PR’s pick of the week’s parties, but you should not forget the actual conference itself or the Ultra Music Festival featuring a multitude of top DJ’s and acts over the Friday and the Saturday.
Poker Account Director, Nicola Freitas will run the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Mile on Sunday 21st March in The Wakefield Priory Mile.
Sport Relief is a very special annual event, taking place from Friday 19th March to Sunday 21st March, where the whole of the UK will come together to get active, raise cash and change lives. The Sports Relief event has a unique history of dedicated people doing extraordinary things to make a difference – from David Walliams’ swim across the English Channel to Eddie Izzard’s amazing marathon a day around the UK.
All money raised for Sport Relief is spent by Comic Relief going to disadvantaged people throughout the UK and across the world’s poorest countries.
Sponsoring me to run this mile, alongside my family for support, couldn’t be easier. Every penny given will offer those less privileged than us, protection, education, and the chance to build a better life. To donate to this worthy cause, please click here.
Thank you.
If you are not as lucky as me and are not going to Matter tonight to see Faithless, then don’t worry as they have been confirmed to headline this year’s Global Gathering. This year Global will be celebrating its 10th year so they will be pulling out all the stops.
Faithless and Global Gathering are giving away a free track to promote the band’s 6th studio album released later this year. To register for your download click here.
Dizzee Rascal will also be strutting his Brit winning stuff, along with 150 other DJs and acts still to be announced. Making a welcome return will be the Godskitchen’s Boombox, which as well as housing the booth for some of the world’s top DJ’s; it will also act as a screen for an awe inspiring visual display. Check out last year’s Boombox stage here.
The two day dance festival takes place in Stratford-upon-Avon on 30th – 31st July and early bird weekend tickets are on sale now priced at £126.50 with a deposit scheme available, which allows festival-goers to spread out the ticket payments. Go to the Global Gathering site for more info.
Are looking for a new flat in Elephant and Castle? How about living opposite Ministry of Sound? This may sound like heaven to the truly dedicated MOS fan, but a planning application by property developer Oakmayne could threaten the club’s entertainment license.
Plans for a residential building which, if built, would sit opposite MOS and the developers do not seem to be fans of the club scene. Oakmayne’s chairman, Christopher Allen, has the opinion that “nightclubs come and go”.
The club, in SE1, has been the centre of the brands business for just over 18 years and has been involved in local projects since 1991. It employs people from the local area and is used as a venue for events for the people of Southwark.
Ministry of Sound Group CEO Lohan Presencer said “When Oakmayne told us that ‘nightclubs come and go’, we were horrified. Ministry of Sound is not just any nightclub; it’s the most famous nightclub in the world and the heart of a global entertainment business. These developers have cut corners at every stage and counter to their claims, they do not have the best interests of the local community at heart. We must do everything in our power to save our club and our business”.
At Poker we hope that this planned development will not result in another big loss in clubland. Developers were responsible for the loss of the Goods Yard, which was home to The Cross and The Key, and it took the London scene a year to recover from the loss of this collection of important venues.
With social media technology moving at such a rapid rate, November last year may as well have been 5 years ago. It was back then that Microsoft announced that Outlook 2010 was to include the add on, Outlook Social Connector, which at the time would connect with only Linked In. But it has since been announced that it’ll now link with many more platforms including Twitter and Facebook.
We at Poker PR like the fact that Social Connector offers an approach that enables you to quickly and easily view all content related to an Outlook contact, including their tweets, Facebook status updates, or other social networking interactions.
The one stand out point of Microsoft’s offering is that your inbox will not be cluttered with lots of additional messages. The expandable People Pane shows a complete messaging and communication history for the given contacts: emails, attachments, calendar events, activities and status updates.
As Google have continued to tweak Buzz over the last week, addressing the privacy concerns, there is still a question hovering as to whether Buzz is really a Facebook and Twitter beating social network; or just – as Microsoft’s solution is – a way of integrating your current social media into your email platform.
Are you going to the International Music Summit (IMS) in Ibiza? If so, how are you getting there? The Hepatitis C Trust has teamed up with the IMS 2010 and is running the first ever ‘GET TESTED! Mission.’ Want to get on board? The mission is to travel from London Bridge, UK to the summit in Ibiza. There is a catch though, this is a road trip, no planes allowed.
The Hepatitis C Trust is the only national UK charity devoted to hepatitis C. It runs a range of services that provide support, information, and representation for people with hepatitis C. It is also committed to raising awareness and lowering the stigma of this widespread disease amongst the general population.
There are many ways of contracting hepatitis C, however, the hedonistic environment and lifestyle associated with partying/clubbing and the music industry as a whole puts many people unwittingly at risk from contracting the disease.
Poker PR are looking forward to the IMS which has been created by six leading professionals (including Pete Tong) to help re-set the agenda for electronic music culture, at a time when the industry needs it most. Set at a special location in Ibiza, the IMS covers three intense days of business programming, networking and activity leading straight into the official opening weekend of the Ibiza season.
For further information on The Hepatitis C Trust and the ‘GET TESTED! Mission’ please visit www.hepctrust.org.uk or email admin@hepctrust.org.uk for an info pack.
For more info on IMS 2010 please visit http://www.internationalmusicsummit.com/
To celebrate the release of Azuli’s 10th Miami album, the long-running independent house label is offering a track from the forthcoming album, for absolutely nothing!
As always, the album predicts what the biggest tunes to come out of the Miami Winter Music Conference will be, and this free track is a taster of what’s in store.
Download your free MP3 of DONS remix of ‘Ghetto Star’ by MWSC now http://j.mp/Azuli-Free-Download and let us know what you think. This track is the opener on CD2 and sets the tone for the remainder of the album; upfront, underground, and very danceable.
Like what you hear? Pre-order your copy now http://j.mp/Album-Order-Amazon Release date: 1st March.
To keep up to date with all Azuli releases and events, become a fan on Facebook http://j.mp/Azuli_Facebook to get exclusive announcements as and when they happen.
So the debate about free music is buzzing again since Warner hinted yesterday that it may pull its catalogues from free music steaming sites such as Spotify, after declaring such services were “clearly not positive for the industry.”
Going back to a time before free streaming; the consumer purchased physical music that then became digital. And with that came the age old problem of piracy – a battle the music industry has fought ever since.
As an answer to illegal downloading, in recent years we’ve seen a soar in free music streaming services like Spotify and Last FM. Record labels have had to get involved due to this huge route to market. Adverts via these portals mean consumers can be targeted directly, but a premium paid for services means the listener gets to ignore the ads.
So along came the Subscription model. It’s not just music to be consumed through this model either, as ticket sales and merchandise generates revenue and exposure. But the issue here is that the supplier – the label – has to agree for its music to be made available, if they want their slice of the profit.
So what happens if the label decides to pull out and not to license its music to these streaming services like Warner has suggested it may do?
Warner’s label chief executive Edgar Bronfman has already said it “Is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in future.”
This will not be a good move for Spotify, Last Fm, We7 etc., but maybe this is just the spin the industry needs.
It begs the question whether Spotify will continue to give the label a share of the existing subscriptions. After all, the seven million users Spotify has in six European countries are not to be sniffed at.
Does this mean the labels will stick to the iTunes model, but with a subscription service? Will all the major labels come together and decide to pull out of free streaming services all together?
There has been so much debate in recent years about how artists and everyone else in the music food chain will actually earn money in the industry. Maybe this is it. I feel another change coming on…
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