AC Blog

So I was watching Dragon’s Den last night on television.

Dragon’s Den is a show where a panel of very successful business people get pitched to by various wannabe entrepreneurs. Typically the pitches are aimed at raising relatively small amounts of cash in return for a stake in the company. The show is highly amusing in that the business heads will really go to town in probing the pitch in order to determine the strength of the proposal, that’s good entertainment as well as educational, anyone looking at starting a business would do well to watch this for the type of questions which are vital to be asked for any business.

Anyway, last night’s show was particularly interesting as one of the pitches was from a band, who accepted an offer from Peter Jones in the order £75k ($150K) for a 30% state in the bands profit, based on two albums.

Now £75k is not much money in the grand scale of things and a 30% stake is an enormous slice of the bands pie, the potential long-term value could be staggering.

Two things spring  to mind for me.

1. Will we start to see more of this type of corporate sponsorship for funding artists/bands. Given that the traditional model of funding is slowly eroding. Could be fantastic revenues for investors if they find a product (BAND) that set hearts on fire.

2. What would this mean for music integrity when the band could be involved in product placement?

Feargal Sharkey (CEO British Music Rights) states “It still takes money and expertise to produce, manufacture and promote a musical recording, which means somewhere along the line, someone has to make an investment – either a label, a brand, the artist themselves or a benefactor like Peter Jones.”

What are your thoughts?

Exclusive Live Videos Set Available on iTunes June 24th.

Radiohead are releasing ten live performance videos recorded at The Hospital studio in Covent Garden, with the team from the band’s longtime producer Nigel Godrich’s ‘From the Basement’ TV show from the basement.

The collection will debut exclusively through iTunes beginning today,June 24th. The videos feature live renditions of songs from ‘InRainbows’ and its bonus CD included in its deluxe discbox edition.

The full track listing of video performances is:

• Bodysnatchers
• House of Cards
• Nude
• Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
• 15 Step
• Reckoner
• Go Slowly
• Videotape
• Bangers & Mash
• All I Need

Captured in a day, with direction by David Barnard and sound by Nigel Godrich, the videos represent the best recorded representation of Radiohead’s live performance to date.

If you are a regular reader of this Blog you’ll have read some previous posts about MediaCamps.

MediaCamps are a series of FREE unconferences aimed at raising awareness of new-media, or Web 2.0 tools for a variety of people. The camps are organised by the Social Media Mafia and have proven to be popular events with lots of people.

AC has a connection with MediaCampLondon in that the camp is being hosted at SAE London and shaping up to be a buzzing event to say the least.

What you can expect at a MediaCamp

Well, the people who sign up to attend the camp are also the people who run the sessions, or workshops, anyone can list their name down to run a session, sharing their experience. Themes are wide and varied including how to run e-mail campaigns, building virtual communities, selling your wares on the internet, blogging, web advertising, using social media in business etc.

If you are working in the music business, or aim to be, you have much to gain from attending and taking part in the camp, it is of course paramount that your business gets involved, or is at least aware of some of those above themes.

Assets

The camp will produce a lot of assets in the shape of pictures, blogs and vlogs, much of it taking place live on the day, you can watch the wiki for information on that. Many of the rooms at MediaCampLondon will have a web cam that will be beaming the sessions out onto utream.tv.

Register 

All you need to do to attend is register your name on the wiki, by going along to this url: http://mediacamplondon.pbwiki.com and browsing to the register section and adding your name.