We’ve not updated this blog for a while as we’ve been hard at work on a new version of the site, which we can now bring you. We’ve been amazed with the response we’ve had up till now. Fans of loads of bands have found us and started promoting their favourite acts. Word of mouth is incredibly important to us and for the bands on our site so we’d like to reward fans for their promotional work.
From now on, the two fans that do the most to promote a gig will get in for free. To elaborate, we’re now offering a suite of tools for fans to share gigs on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and via email. This promotion will earn points – and those with the highest number of points will receive a free ticket to the gig they helped promote. For a full rundown of the offer, take a look at our FAQ.
For artists we’re offering a whole new suite of tools to improve the work of planning gigs and communicating with fans. Our new artist accounts – which you can sign up for here, offer you a buzz tracker to find who’s talking about you online and track the amount of buzz you’re building. We also now offer a single page where all of your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace updates can appear – giving fans a single view of all your activity. Finally you can track fan promotions – to see how much they’ve been spreading the word about you and use this to measure demand and help plan future concerts.
Now although this is all live now, it’s so new that you may find a few things that don’t work how they should.
Please bare with us and if you find anything odd, then please let us know – either in the blog comments or here. Rest assured our crack team of developers will be working though the site to stomp on any remaining bugs. Moreover if there’s anything not currently on site that you’d like to see in the future we’d like to hear that too. As always if you have any comments, get in touch, and keep bidding and spreading the words – there are points to gained now.
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A few videos and and some news that could be either terrible or wonderful this week. First of all, lets get to a pair of rather talented if odd musicians. Firstly one of the most talented kids we’ve ever seen – and likely to never appear on X Factor, this five year old is an amazing drummer, performing the mean feat of drumming along to System of a Down’s Toxicity.
Now we’re not sure that this second performer is genuine or aware of their talent but it is funny. From the site that brought you Death Metal Puppy, we bring you Death Metal Rooster!
Finally, the news that Disney is remaking the Yellow Submarine fills us with a mixture of interest and trepidation. It could be brilliant or it could be awful. One piece of news that says it will be good is the casting of top funnyman Peter Serafinowicz as Paul MacCartney. He’s played The Beatles before as seen on this funny clip and this music video. Fingers crossed.
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As befits the end of any year these days, everyone has to make lists and best ofs… not least because with much stuff to choose from, it helps us catch up of anything we missed. However there’s no reading in these summaries – firstly there is this very clever video mix of the year’s cleverest pop videos into an hour long mix. Even more condensed is DJ Earworm’s State of Pop 2009 that condenses the top 25 single in America into just five minutes.
Looking forward into 2010, here’s the first video of the year to take our fancy – and it’s not even finished yet – but that’s when you come in. Similar to the fan based Star Wars remake – where fans made 15 seconds of the film, Brooklyn artists, C-Mon & Kypski are asking fans to donate one from for there new video. They’re up to over 5000, but they still need some more to complete the project. Join up here.
Seen anything interesting on the web? Drop us a line.
Also if you have any questions about Owngig.com, let us know. You can get in touch here.
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As a site, Owngig is of course, powered by you the people. Without you we’d be nothing, and so people coming together in the service of music is always of interest to us. This is why we love the campaign on Facebook to get Rage Against The Machine to be the Christmas number one – and stop the X Factor winner being the predictable choice. The group has over half a million members – join up if you haven’t already, but make sure you get the single.
Knitwear hasn’t up till now featured too prominently in pop. OK, there’s been the odd crooner with dodgy taste in knitwear but that aside it’s been pretty bare. Looking to make up for this is a rather cute video featuring over 700 pieces of knitwear to make the world’s first wool based cartoon. Check it out here…
Finally, this is one of the best pieces of promotion we’ve ever seen for a musician and what’s more it cost nothing. One enterprising musician ran alongside a Google Street View car to get photographed playing as it went along the road – something he managed several times on the same street. Check the shots out here. Definitely Owngig approved.
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This week we thought we bring you something useful. We’re not all about silly links and nutty videos (well mostly but we have to take a break now and then). For those of you planning musical Christmas gifts or just wanting to treat yourself, Tunechecker is a music price comparison sites for mp3s and albums. Handy for saving money this Christmas.
Want to know the link between Bony M and Lady Gaga or Queen and The Black Eyed Peas? The art of sampling and crate digging (searching through old records for those few seconds of audio dynamite) is a long standing musical tradition and Who Sampled is a new site seeking to document the art. So if you’re wondering what made up Paul’s Boutique or any other classic then check the site’s database out for enlightenment.
Finally, it wouldn’t be an Owngig newsletter without a silly video. The pink glove dance was done by staff at a US hospital in order to raise awareness of Breast Cancer and has been a global viral hit. It also brings a smile to your face.
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A combination of the silly and the chinstroking make up this week’s newsletter. First we bring you a right bunch of muppets… literally. The Muppets have been popular for over thirty years and have already attracted 3 million views with their unique version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Check it out here.
Also involving silly dancing and music is this rather quirky Japanese video featuring the Helicopter Boyz (I don’t know who they are either). Attaching small personal projectors to themselves as they dance makes for a rather interesting spectacle.
Finally, Owngig brings you a first in this newsletter, an academic paper. Before you all stop reading, this is the first academic paper I’ve ever seen that has 80s video games referenced. This paper on the history of chiptunes (computer music – particularly those in video games) is both fascinating and fun. Check it out here.
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Tonight in Britain is Children in Need – a famous annual telethon on behalf of good causes. This years has used a technique close to Owngig’s heart – crowdsourcing. Chartjackers aims to create a number one hit solely by using YouTube and the users of the site.
As they say, “The lyrics of the song are made up of YouTube comments, compiled into a song by another YouTuber. The lyrics were released and then YouTubers wrote a melody for the lyrics, and we picked our favourite. We held YouTube auditions via video response to pick the band, found the producer of the song through YouTube, and the music video is made up of literal interpretations of the lyrics, clapping and singing along, by YouTubers!” View the video here.
Also close to Owngig’s heart is, of course, live music, so naturally we loved the tour by Ash, which went round the UK in alphabetical order. There was a mild bit of (understandable) cheating – Exeter for X for example but the tour, done to celebrate the band’s plan to release 26 similarly themed alphabetical singles in a year is a great move.
Finally, it wouldn’t be an Owngig newsletter without something a bit sillier. Welcome to the world of manualism. This isn’t as rude as it sounds – it’s the art of making music with your hands. Perhaps this video explains it better – as well as being odd it’s also awesome. Sweet Child ‘o’ Mine, done with hands.
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Keep a close eye on your inbox next week as some of you will be getting an email to give you first dibs on an Owngig concert that you’ve been bidding for quite a while. If there’s any tickets left after this first round, then details will appear on our site. There’s also a few other gigs that are getting quite close to that magic moment so as we always say in these emails, keep bidding.
This week on the web we’ve been loving…
This week’s round up is a mixture of the silly and the serious. As it’s Friday and the weekend is almost upon us, let’s start with a bit of fun. Christopher Walken is a scary man in many movies but he’s also great at using his scariness in the service of humour – a fact demonstrated by his star turn in a Fatboy Slim video a few years back. Well this time a straightfaced reading of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face song makes for similar straightfaced mirth.
In a similar silly vein, we found this video of dancing ferrets made us smile due to its pure charm. Plus the fact that they appear to be dancing to an easy listening version of Weezer’s Buddy Holly adds to the appeal. But don’t take our word for it click here.
Now we’ve made you smile we’d like to make you think. There’s been a lot of doom and gloom about what internet downloads have done to music in recent years has done to the artform, which is why this opinion piece by John Harris is a breath of fresh air. Are we living in the Golden Age of Infnite Music? Read for yourself.
Finally a link to bookmark and come back to. We’re almost at the end of the first decade of the millenium and one music blogger has started a ‘list of lists’ documenting all the inevitable best album/gig/single/video etc of the 2000s. Worth a look to see what you missed. See you next week.
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Are you just starting out in the world of music? Have no idea how many people like you or would be interested in seeing you live? Keep an eye on Owngig because we’ll be looking to roll out some interesting new developments soon. In the mean time if you have any feedback on what you’d like to see, get in touch here.
This week on the web we’ve been loving…
Ever wanted to be in a music video? Well, assuming you like John Mayer you can be. By using the webcam on your computer, this nifty piece of technical wizardry means that it’s possible to be in the background of the action in his latest video. This is known as augmented reality – which John describes in this video.
On a more historical nature, we found this article from German magazine Der Spiegel fascinating. The article (in English) details one Klaus Quirini who was in 1959 the world’s first DJ. How things have changed and how things were then is very interesting and worth a read, particularly if you’ve ever been clubbing.
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This week seems to be all about all about unorthodox musical instruments. There are some creative people out there and they’ve been making beautiful music out there. First is the world’s first subway station stairway piano. A very clever Swedish clip on YouTube shows how people can make beautiful music on their way to work.
Closer to home here in Britain, a few electronic musicians have teamed up to produce a solution to a problem that’s been a problem at many electronic gigs over the years – namely that they’re really boring. This writer from past experience can definitely testify to the dullness of watching someone hunched over a laptop. It just doesn’t compare well with a rock gig. So their Eigenharp looks to present a solution by creating an electronic instrument that is both versatile and fun to watch. Have they succeeded? Judge for yourself here.
Finally, and everywhere on the internet, this final video is an example of lip dubbing – where people combine lip syncing and audio dubbing to make a music video. This one – in time to the Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling is certainly one of the most ambitious, using the whole of the campus of the University of Quebec.
