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

We’ve watched the rise of Spotify with great interest. If you haven’t heard of it, then you’re missing out. It’s basically itunes but instead of having to buy the music you can search for stuff from the millions of tracks from the Spotify libraries. OK, it doesn’t have everything but it’s pretty damn close. If that wasn’t great enough, rumours of an iPhone application have surfaced. If this video is to be believed, we’re very excited. We’ve also been excited by the pretty lights of the new Royksopp video. We’re hearing very good things about the new album, Junior too, but this first single is great.

The rise of the premium version of albums is interesting to watch at the minute. Like Owngig, they look to offer something different and new for the fan. These two in particular caught our eye. Firstly, small obscure Irish band U2 have brought a set for the release of their new album featuring a limited edition box set the CD, a DVD of Anton Corbijn’s exclusive film Linear, a hardback book, plus a fold out poster.

But it’s not just big bands that are spoiling their hardcore fans. London based balearic band, A Mountain of One recently released a rather spiffy limited edition EP to preview their new album. This limited edition of 50 contains the EP, a t-shirt, poster and badge all in a rather nice box. Given we already have given out T-shirts at Owngig concerts it gives us some ideas for the future. What would you like to see as part of a special package at an Owngig concert? Drop us a line and let us know.

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

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Loving is probably the wrong term for this first item, maybe following with interest is more appropriate, but this week saw the start of the trial of Swedish torrent site, The Pirate Bay. This site is one of the main players in the illegal downloading of music and movies and while they host no content, they index the torrents that make it possible from around the world. Whether taking them out of business would really make much difference is a moot point but the trial has been interesting to follow. This being 2009, one of the defendants is Twittering live and there’s also a channel created where people can comment on trial developments.

At the same time we’ve seen news of a launch that look to bring digital music to the people in a legal way that offer an alternative to iTunes. BSkyB is planning to launch a music service where for a monthly fee you can listen to all the music you like. Following on from being given away.

Finally, something more light hearted – we’re looking forward to next week’s NME with a CD of Cure covers being given away. If you fancy hearing Dinosaur Jr covering Just Like Heaven, The Editors doing Lullaby or even The Futureheads doing Lovecats, check it out. We’re not sure if it’s going to be ace or awful but we’re definitely intrigued.

We know it’s cold out there and probably many of you are skint, so we thought we’d give you sometime to be cheerful by showing you another great use of technology to bring you the music you love – Hype Machine’s Zeitgeist 2008.

The popular mp3 blog aggregator has joined together with Musebin, Imeem, Flickr, Bluga and Amazon.com to bring you a guide to the 50 most blogged albums, songs and artists of 2008. What makes it neat is not only that if provides a list but that all those data services provide a variety of services -  aggregating and summarises blog posts, provides album art automatically and most impressively of all provides full streaming of each album for the ultimate try before you buy.

Check it out – maybe some of the albums you’ve seen in the other glut of lists will feature. Feel free to bid for them in Owngig if you like what you hear

Overall for a site that launched just over six months ago, we’ve done pretty well in the press up till now. We’ve been on Channel 4, Radio 4 and The World Service. Plus we’ve also featured in The Sunday Times and popular comedy site, Chortle. Well now we can add The Telegraph to the list, after we got the following piece online – looking at us as part of a wider trend piece looking at band reunions – including The Smiths whose peerless Derek Jarman directed How Soon is Now video sits above this piece.

Thanks to Bernadette McNulty for the publicity.

Another first of 2008. Bibendum arrives in Japan

At this time of year one thing that overtakes the world of entertainment is list mania. It seems you can’t click on a link anywhere without falling over someone’s best of the year, in everything from the top ten oddball news stories of 2008 to the top 60 popular Japanese words/phrases of 2008 (the inspiration for the above pic – no. 21). In fact if you’re list mad then this page that aggregates all the lists online maybe of use.

With all this list compiling we’re pleased to see that Owngig.com hasn’t been overlooked and has made it into Music Ally’s 200 digital music startups from 2008, alongside such luminaries as Pitchfork.tv and Spotify. It’ll be interesting to see where the next year takes Owngig – we’re already having a lot of interesting conversations, which should make 2009 a very good year for the site. Till then, Owngig.com would like to wish you all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and if you’ve never heard it, do yourself a favour and buy this. Best. Christmas. Album. Ever.

Last Saturday, November 22nd saw the first Owngig.com concert and we’re pleased to announce it was a resounding success. The Blow Monkeys played a blinding set at The Prospect of Whitby and in addition to the fans, a few of the press turned up – including Channel 4 News, Radio 4 and the World Service. In fact Owngig.com has been making the news today. Here’s our piece on Channel 4…

…and you can hear us on the Today programme here.

Our new Owngig.com YouTube and Flickr channels will hold images and videos from all of our gigs and this first gig was no exception – here’s The Blow Monkeys performing It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way.

Hope to see some of you at our next gig. Till then, keep bidding!

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