This week we’ve been working behind the scenes on our new Polish version of the site to launch soon. We’ll be announcing full details of this next week but if you have any Polish friends, let them know – and gigs in Gdańsk, Kraków or Warsaw with their favourite artists could be coming soon.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

OK, so they’re not going to win any awards for sound fidelity but these tiny iPod speakers in the shape of an 80s boombox will certainly win points for cuteness. Following on from the iPod dock that was similarly retro styled, this mini version is just too much. Buy here .

Some of you will have seen the small space invader tiles in various cities around the world, done by French artist, Invader. Well we liked this project that takes famous album sleeves and tiles them. Try to guess them all here …

Finally a link that’s being doing the rounds this week to a musician I think it’s safe to say won’t be doing an Owngig any time soon, this singer is more an exercise on how long you can stand to listen to his song. I got 49 seconds in before I could stand no more. See how you do here and if you make it all the way to the end then your aversion to pain is impressive.

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Want to spread the word about Owngig and help promote a one-off gig from your favourite artist? Remember that on site we have tools that allow you to make custom badges and banners you can use to place on forums, blogs and websites. They’re perfect for artists too. Check them out on our site here.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Well although he seems to have been having a bit of a melt down on Twitter today over a bad review in the Guardian, we’ve still been rather impressed with Calvin Harris’ amazing human synthesiser. Using fifteen models, conductive paint and markings on the floor, his new single can be ‘played’ by dancing. To be honest we can only explain this so well – check out the videos here. Then, in a similar and somewhat simpler vein, this remote controlled instrument allows you to play tunes automatically on your kettle when it boils. Very clever.

Finally we spent quite a while playing with this Lyrics visualiser. Simply put in the name of a song you like and it plots similarly lyriced themes on a nifty little chart. Great for preparing similarly themed mixtapes.

We don’t actually issue physical tickets, but you get the idea

The music industry as anyone can see is in a state of flux. The last fifteen years have seen a series of ground breaking changes from mp3 to Spotify via Napster. We represent part of the future of live music,  bringing the world of crowdsourcing to the concert and giving fans a new way to get unique gigs from their favourite artists.

As anyone who reads our newsletters knows, we spend a lot of time behind the scenes talking to the music industry, social networks and indeed anyone else that can help us put on concerts and generally make a success of the site.

But as many of you will also know, making a success of Owngig is as much as anything a matter of getting buzz about us out there with the fans so that people come to our site to bid for events. The more bids we have, the greater the chance the gig will happen.

To promote this, we’d like to unveil a new initiative to anyone that can help get the word out about Owngig – in particular, those of you that have a blog. Basically, in return for writing a blog post about us (with an inbound link to our site), you’ll get a free ticket for any concert we put on. We’re talking to some big names (and we hate being coy, but trust us, you’ll have heard of them unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last ten years), so this is a good offer. You may even provide the tipping point that leads to a gig by one of your favourite artists taking place.

If you’re interested in taking up this offer, then get in contact via the form on our website. The offer will be redeemable once you’ve written the blog post and can either be for any gig we put on, or if you’d prefer, a specific artist. In either case, you’ll be added to the guest list for the event.

If you have any questions about this offer before you write the post, leave them via the contact form and we’ll get back in touch with you.  Clearly we won’t give away free tickets for ever, so if you like the offer, drop us a line. When the offer closes, we’ll put some of our favourite posts on the blog.

One thing we’ve seen on the web recently was that one of our favourite comedians, Chris Morris is using the crowdsourcing to fund his new project, Four Lions. After Channel 4 and BBC1 ran scared of the new comedy project, Four Lions which darkly satirists the world of Islamist miltancy, Chris turned to the internet and in association with Warp Films, asked punters to pay £25 each to fund the project. In return they got the chance to appear in the show. So, similar to Owngig.com, the public get the chance to get a personalised experience for funding the project.

In other site news…

We’re pleased to see that bids for Tom Waits is edging close to 100. Not least ‘cos we quite like Tom Waits. We’d love to get him over here, so keep bidding. Also if you have any ideas for suitably Tom Waits-esque places he could perform a gig, drop us a line…

We’re excited to announce the launch of the Owngig.com comedy channel, allowing you to bid for your favourite comedians and create your own bespoke experiences just as you can currently with the world of music. Perhaps you’d like to see Josie Long, Russell Howard or Frankie Boyle?

Anyway, start thinking about who you’d like to see and start placing bids. It’s no laughing matter

There’s more to follow soon including a widget to place on your social network profile, enabling you to display latest bids and invite friends to join you.

Having attended gigs for too many years to mention it has always baffled me as to why fans don’t get more say in where artists choose to tour.

Now that is set to change, and through this community we enable users with similar tastes in music and comedy to come together, demonstrating to artists where there is sufficient demand to add a tour date or even arrange a special show.

We are well connected with record labels, artist management and the booking agencies and will ensure that your collective voice is heard whenever we detect strong interest in a specific show. Furthermore in due course we will be allowing artists themselves to post shows to the site itself, creating a trading platform for future performances.

Its still early days for us, hence the alpha status of the site, so we are very keen to understand where you think we can improve the service. We have even created a section in Contact Us to make suggestions / complaints about Owngig.com – please do let us know so we can add relevant suggestions to our future plans.

If you have any questions then please refer to the FAQ first as we may have it covered already.

Finally look out for the Owngig.com widget which will be available for most social networks very soon. This will enable you to display your first, best and worst gigs in your profile as well as creating your own gig and inviting others to join you.

That’s it for now, but we will be posting regularly to update you on our plans and to announce new shows so please come back soon.