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This is from the weekly Owngig newsletter. Register on site to recieve this every Friday.

Apologies for the lack of newsletter last week – we were busy on a big top secret project so couldn’t spare the time but normal service is now resumed. Our biggest news this week was that we were on the radio again – BBC Radio 2 interviewed our founder Richard. Thanks to Tokiohoteluk on YouTube for putting it online for us.

Also, coming soon but running a little late if we’re honest is our Tweet for Tickets offer on Twitter. Rest assured we’re still starting it soon, so if you’re interested, then get following us at twitter.com/Owngig.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

The world is full of brilliant music – that’s why people are such fans of the bands they love. But of course, not everything can be excellent – let’s face it, there’s also a lot of awful music out there. Which is where Wow Demo Blog comes in. Run by a small independent record label, it simply highlights some of the less inspiring submissions. Some are hilarious, some are tragic but all will definitely provoke a reaction – even if it wasn’t what they orignally intended.

We’ve been in love with Shazam for the longest time (not least because if you have an iPhone, the app is free), but it’s not right for everything. Got a tune going round in your head, or more importantly a snippet of the lyrics? Well, if you’re on Twitter, simply direct your remembered lyrics at Lyricrat on Twitter and it will tweet the song back. Clever eh?

Finally, we were impressed with this arty little site that allows you to create your own soundscape using the sixteen YouTube videos arranged in a grid. Each of the sixteen features a different musician but because they’re all playing in the same key, it all works together beautifully.

It’s been a bit of an 80s week so this image seemed appropriate

This is from the Owngig newsletter. Register on site to recieve it in your inbox every Friday.

With there now over 100 bids on site for Rick Astley and our first gig being The Blow Monkeys, it seems that we’ve gone a bit 80s here at Owngig Towers. Well, following a meeting with A-Ha’s label, it seems that another act from the decade of Thatcher and the Rubik’s Cube is interested in playing an Owngig. So if you loved A-Ha, know anyone who loves A-Ha or even just fancy a bit of nostalgia, then bid on site now and you could be seeing Morten up close at an exclusive gig soon.

One thing we’re also pleased to bring you soon is our exclusive tickets through Twitter offer, which we announced earlier in the week on our Twitter account. The details are being worked out as we speak and we hope to bring you more information soon, but in the meantime, if you’re on Twitter and haven’t already, follow our account here.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Although we’ve seen interactive music videos before – the one for Arcade Fire springs to mind, we were impressed with this one for the Cold War Kids, not least because as well as being interactive it allows you to remix the song – by removing or adding elements from the music. Check it out here.

Love, is perhaps the wrong word for the next item but, it’s certainly intriguing. DJ Dangermouse, best known for being the mastermind behind Gnarls Barkley and The Grey Album (check out this video) was planning a new album. All was going well with collaborators for the album including Jarvis Cocker, Iggy Pop, Frank Black, The Flaming Lips and David Lynch was even lined up to do the sleeve design. However, because of a legal dispute with the record label, release was indefinitely delayed.

DJ Dangermouse’s response has been very inventive – he’s releasing the CD case – with Lynch’s sleeve art but with a blank CD inside. The music has been leaked onto peer to peer, so fans can hear it, so if they choose they can buy the case and make their own release. If you want to buy the release, click here, although you’ll have to find your own way to the songs.

Finally, to something less thought provoking but very pretty. This building in Linz Austria was covered lights that respond to sound. Worth checking out the video here.

Spinning vinyl ipod app from Theodore Watson on Vimeo.

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This week we’ve been excited to see the bids rolling in for Rick Astley, following a tie up with Rick Astley’s UK site. Thanks to Neil, who runs the site for putting together the pages on site and Rick’s manager Tops for approving this activity. Click here to bid on Rick if you fancy an Owngig for him – the bids are flooding in right now.

We’re also excited that it looks like we’re going to be speaking at this year’s New Music Seminar. Originally a big event back in the 1980s, the seminar has been relaunched to help new bands with the tools they need to make the most of their music these days – something we’re well placed to help with. Check out the site for further details.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Sometimes the simplest and silliest things online are the best. Kanye West is a man not known for shying away from the internet. For exmaple, just this week we’ve had a rant against Twitter. His long standing blog which has become one of the most popular celebrity sites online. Then there’s his trademark sunglasses. Well, if you’ve ever wondered what the web looks like through his eyes, now you can find out, with the Kanye-vision simulator. Simply install the button by dragging it to the top of your browser and a view of the web through his eyes will be yours.

There’s so much music out there now, so you sometimes need a way of filtering it down – and also discovering new music in the process. With this in mind, we were impressed with Sourcetone, which promises to match the music to your mood. It’s a well put together site and we were impressed with its selections.

Finally, we think we’ve found our new favourite iPhone app. Sadly, it’s not in the store yet, but this spinning vinyl app is very clever and we hope to see it in the iTunes store soon. To be honest, this is one of those links you just have to see for yourself.  Click on the video above to check it out in all its glory.

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A celebrity you may not recognise but already know – Roberta from Spotify

The world of autotune has spread across the internet and music in recent years but we’ve seen it applied to a whole new load of audio this week. In particular, baby cries, the speeches of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King and most randomly of all, the news. Everything, it seems is more tuneful, with autotune.

It may not have escaped your attention that there’s a lot of music on the internet, and in particular on services like Spotify. But have you ever wondered just how much? Well thanks to a rather clever trick by music blog, Music Machinery you can find out how many tracks Spotify has (several million) and even stick the whole lot of them on a playlist. An interesting and rather clever way to find new music we think.

Finally, on a more moving tip we loved this collection of buskers globally all singing Ben E. King’s classic 60s soul song, Stand by Me. Done to promote the Playing for Change project that promotes peace through music, this is a moving rendition of the song. We hope you enjoy it.

Play your low bitrate Britney mp3s on this high concept player

This is from this week’s Owngig.com newsletter. For the full content, register here…

One thing we love about the ‘net is the sheer pointless of what of people get involved with. That’s half the fun. This new mp3 player fits somewhere between genius and madness. It’s also very pretty. The ReBraun is based on the classic consumer gadgets by Dieter Rams who worked for Braun. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, this page shows the design goodness in depth. What makes the ReBraun straddle the genius/madness divide is the sheer cost of the thing. £12000 for an mp3 player? You could get £80 iPods for that. One for our richer email subscribers we think.

Similarly pointless, if slightly cheaper is this incredibly cute rendition of MGMT’s Kids on four iPod/iPhones. This video by The Mentalists has been all over the internet, clocking up over 650,000 views at the time of writing this. Who knows, maybe they’d like to do an Owngig. Bid for them here…

Finally, this week we’d like to give away some free music. Well, strictly speaking it’s not us, but South by South West – a yearly American music and internet jamboree. For the second year in a row, they’ve put legal mp3s of every band playing at the festival to download in a single torrent – all 1267 acts playing. You can download it here. What’s more if you feel overwhelmed by the choice contained in this massive file, someone’s gone to the trouble of writing six word reviews of each of the files contained within (as well as a rating). Get your guide here…

Though they’re not the most obvious axe hero band, the news that one of the biggest bands the world has ever seen, The Beatles will be available for some virtual guitar shredding on billion pound video game, Guitar Hero from this September. Given that the group’s music isn’t even available on iTunes, it’s an interesting development. We’re looking forward to doing Birthday in September.

All fans are curious about the bands they listen to – we all like to know a bit of trivia about them, so this compiled list, sourced from Amazon of what a wide variety of bands listen to is fascinating. Although top bidding Owngig act Tokio Hotel aren’t on the list there’s a lot more from Franz Ferdinand to Tom Waits. Check out the full list here.

Finally we were impressed by the Thru You video which combines loads of different videos to make music video that combines them all in a master mash up with loads of disparate sources. The actual site where the video was stored has proved so popular that at the time of writing this they’ve had to stop showing it on site. But never fear, YouTube to the rescue – you can judge it for yourself looking at the video above.

Proof electronic music has gone to the dogs? Far from it.

From this week’s Owngig newsletter, here’s a trio of music videos we’re loving…

This stop-motion video is a cute as a button clip for 80s fans Rex the Dog. For those who don’t know, Rex the Dog was an underground sensation for a few years, not least because he refused to drop the pretense that all the music was made by a canine. He even went to the trouble of doing a short phone interview with Radio One answering questions only in dog barks (one for yes, two for no). That silliness over, this is a great video for a great song.

We’re on a boat! Great new parody from American group, The Lonely Island (whose previous hit we can’t put the name of in this newsletter) of all those rap videos on expensive sea cruisers. They even manages to rope in everyone’s favourite auto-tune abuser, T-Pain.

Finally, this video from hip young things Chairlift could make your brain melt out of your ears. By messing around with the timeframes in the digital video they create a very trippy effect, akin to your set top box developing a fever. Don’t blame us if when you’ve finished watching you find reality has disappeared and you find yourselves in a Yellow Submarine.

Seen anything interesting on the web? Drop us a line.

“Wish I’d thought of that Songsmith mashup”

Hi,

Welcome to the weekly newsletter from Owngig.com. These newsletters bring you the latest Owngig news and a selection of music related links we’ve found from around the web.

This week on Owngig…

This week, while it’s been a pretty typical on site, with a variety of bids on a good selection of different music and comedy acts, what we can’t talk about is developments, offsite. Suffice to say there’s been some interesting developments with some big names that we hope to tell you more soon. Watch this space…

Less classified, but also coming soon to Owngig are some shiny new widgets to use on MySpace and Facebook. In the meantime if you’re a musician or fan, we already have images for you to embed on your website, blog or Myspace page. Click here to download them and show your support.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

First, a slight return for Songsmith from a few weeks ago. Microsoft’s automatic backing band software has spread all over the web with a wide variety of different acts used to unintentionally hilarious effect for everything from Metallica to Britney Spears.

However, the latest one takes a different tack by feeding in economic data from the current recession to use as musical backing. Sound dry? Technical? Depressing? Wait till you hear it. You’ll never know a recession and economic gloom could sound so swinging!

While still on YouTube, more basically, we were impressed by a simple video/film mashup so simple but genius we’re surprised no one has thought of it before. Depeche Mode and Tron together. Just under 10,000 views at the time of writing this so far but we expect this to go up pretty quickly.

Finally a new startup, Gigulate, promises to place all the information about any band you’re into in one convenient page so you can see gigs, albums, press etc all on one page. There’s a whole lot more planned it seems so we look forward to seeing more. Check out their blog here for more…

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.

Find us on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and now, Twitter

This week’s Owngig newsletter is intense…

Every Thursday we send out an email newsletter to Owngig registered users. Here’s this week’s content. If you’d like to recieve these, register on site and these will be delivered every Thursday to your inbox without fail.

This week on Owngig

We’ve seen a lot of bids this week for artists as diverse as Tom Waits and Airhead (early 90s British indie band). Offsite we also joined the likes of Stephen Fry, Philip Schofield and Britney Spears by launching our own Twitter channel.

If you haven’t heard of Twitter yet, it’s basically blogging for those with no time – as you can only put 140 characters into each of your messages. This does make it a simple and effective way to communicate and there’s lots of interesting folks on it to follow. For a beginners guide, look here

…and if all of this is old news to you and you’re already tweeting away your every move, feel free to find (and follow) us here…

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

The rise, fall and rise again of The Boxer Rebellion is a story we’ve been watching with interest – as again it shows how the music business is changing and opening up new opportunities for bands and fans.

For those of you not filled in, The Boxer Rebellion are a UK band who on the cusp of fame were dropped by their record label in 2005– just two weeks after it had been released. Undeterred and with loyal fans behind them they kept touring and self-funded their second album, Union, this month.

Despite the lack of record label promotion and as a virtual release it doesn’t even qualify for the official charts, it nevertheless got to #4 in the iTunes download chart. Congratulations to them and if you’re interested in seeing them, remember you can bid for them here at no cost.

In other news, among many other people, we’re pleased to announce that we think we’ve found 2009’s first internet movie star (no not, Stains the dog), but instead, Mark Gormley who definitely is breaking new ground in the world of music videos (!) Take a look at Without You – which at the time of writing this had over 200,000 views on YouTube. As the voiceover beforehand says, it’s very, very intense

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.

Find us on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and now, Twitter

The Beastie Boys (plus Marvin Gaye and Radiohead) as you’ve never heard them before in this week’s newsletter

Every Thursday we send out an email newsletter to Owngig registered users. Here’s this week’s content. If you’d like to recieve these, register on site and these will be delivered every Thursday to your inbox without fail.

This week on Owngig…

If you haven’t been on site recently (and if not, why not!), then check out our new recommendations feature. Every artist page now displays related bids from other users – so you can see what your fellow fans also like. We hope this will give you more ideas for gigs you’d like to see.

You can also now add pictures to artist profiles and we’ve seen the galleries fill up with fan submissions, so join in and add your own.

Finally, we’re pleased to announce our first Owngig with over 500 bids. Congratulations to fans of Tokio Hotel who have now pushed their favourite band over the 500 bids marker. If you’re a fan and you haven’t already bid, click here to do so – we hope to have some exciting news to impart to fans very soon.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

When Microsoft’s experimental labs launched Songsmith – a program that automatically generates backing tracks for your vocals, who would’ve thought that the web would’ve so enthusiastically used (and abused it). The somewhat cheesy nature of what Songsmith spits out as backing has provided some rather comedic gems. You’ll see what we mean on the below links…

Beastie Boys vs. Songsmith

Marin Gaye vs. Songsmith

Radiohead vs. Songsmith

More practically, we were impressed with FeedRevolution – a useful site that solves a simple need – finding out when your favourite bands release new material. Simply put the band you like into the box, supply your email (or last.fm profile name) and the site emails you when they release new material. You can also receive an RSS feed of new releases if you’re that way inclined.

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.

Find us on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and shortly, Twitter.