Mike Butcher

So I got my Virgin Media customer pack today. They must be sending it to everyone who has ever touched Virgin (I had a Virgin mobile number once, plus I was on Telewest at one time). Clearly they are going for the whole "we'll simplify TV, broadband, phone and mobile for you" pitch. There is also a response mechanic: If you got to Knowfirst.co.uk you'll obviously have read their printed marketing material. Not just found it via a blog or something. Oh no. To cap it all, in the small print on the back of their slick marketing material are the tiny words: "Security features not available to Mac users." Hmmn, so much for the Apple-esque marketing material then.

Is LastFM about to announce a deal, possibly with US media giant Viacom? There was the odd whisper around the ’social music sharing’ startup at the Future of Web Apps conference this week in London – especially after their stellar presentation to developers and assorted VCs in the audience. Then we just heard this morning from a well-placed source that the deal was being hammered out today. DealBreaker.com has already reported that the purchase price will be $450 million dollars. However, hold your horses… I just got off the phone to LastFM co-founder Richard Jones, who said: “If you do a little digging there have been all sorts of rumours over the last few months none of which have turned out to be true. Our policy is not to comment on rumours.” And indeed he didn’t comment. But if this turns out to be true this would be possibly the biggest deal to come out of London for an Internet startup for several years. Stay tuned… literally….

The University of Westminster’s New Media Knowledge (NMK) programme is taking applications from people who would like to speak or appear on a panel at its annual new media conference in June this year. I am a journalist helping to produce the content for this year’s event, and am the first point of contact for anyone wanting to appear on stage at the event (though NMK has final say). I’m also interested in hearing form any bloggers who would like to “cover” the conference.

The day-long conference will feature panellists and digital industry luminaries from across the UK, along with international guests and keynote speakers. This year the conference will focus on getting real dialogue going between attendees and feature heavyweight sections about digital media, marketing, advertising, communities (social media etc) and commerce. This year’s programme is still in formation but in past years the keynote speakers have included people such as Bradley Horowitz (Vice President of Product Strategy – Yahoo!), Marc Canter (CEO – Broadband Mechanics) and Shel Israel (Author – Naked Conversations).

The event this year promises to be a fantastic opportunity to network and make contact with the UK’s new media “movers and shakers”. Last year NMK ran the highly successful and well-regarded Content 2.0 event, the archive of which is here.

Some topics we’ll cover:

- The new platforms for media and advertising

- Entertainment in the new digital world

- Connected Consumers

- The new metrics of measurement in the attention economy

- Mobile as a media and social entity

- Brand strategy in the digital economy

- The future for search

- Social media’s next steps

- The UK’s top technology startups

- Second Life, Virtual worlds, and the next stage

So, email me to:

• Indicate if you would like to *apply* to speak and on what topic area

• Indicate if you would like to participate on a panel

• Indicate if your company would be interested in sponsoring any aspect of the event (sponsor packages will including branding, networking/hospitality sponsorship, web/mobile sponsorship etc)

• Indicate if you have a blog relevant to the event and would like to be considered for the “Bloggers’ Bullpen”

Please contact me about any of the above, and please also remember that although we can’t fit absolutely everyone in (even though I’d like to), there will be PLENTY of opportunity to make your voice heard.

It’s now obvious that in order to promote a band these days you have to play online. MySpace was a ‘go-to’ place for a long time, although it is fast losing its cache as record companies start to – ethically or unethically – virally seed their own acts, sometimes even using robots to add hundreds of friends to an artist’s site or just employing people specifically for this task. And while the likes of Lilly Allen and Sandi Thom have managed to shoe-horn their MySpace exposure into a real-world record contract, the likes of Imogen Heap has some 330,000 ‘friends’ signed up to her myspace – a fact which still didn’t get her into the charts.

Instead, some bands are starting to bypass the whole record industry infrastructure (MySpace included), with some evidence of success. Koopa, a punk band, recently made it into the UK top 20 charts based on their sales via IndieStore.com – which is now hooked-up to the official chart system.

Indiestore enables artists to build their own download store, earn cash from the sales of their tracks and secure a chart position in official charts in the UK, US and 20 other countries. In addition, artists can promote their gigs and stay in touch with their fans on their own indiestore. Bands receive 80 per cent of money from sales.

The UK-based Bandwagon, too, has the advantage that people can download a single from the site and it will be chart eligible.

Now Bandwagon has launched a Millionpoundjukebox.com. This plays a jukebox of a random track from Bandwagon bands, and displays pixels which you can buy to advertise on the page (via paypal).

So the deal is: over a 12 week period, 120 bands will be streamed through the jukebox; 10 tracks from different artists will be playlisted and streamed each week; an industry led A&R panel will chose 20 winners at the end of the period; each winner will receive £25,000 for development (music videos, publicity). (My favourite so far is Lucky Soul, but then I always like music which sounded like The Cardigans!)

You can get a feel for how these sites are doing from Alexaholic. There, you’ll see IndieStore has had the most traction so far. However, it’s worth reminding you that page traffic figures on e-commerce sites have never been that useful a measure.

Meanwhile, the opportunities to sell or push your own music online have never been bigger. Just check out Soundclick, CDbaby and Garageband to get a flavour. Soundclick, which offers free music, is the biggest of these obviously. Here’s a traffic comparison.

Apple’s iTunes music software is not fully compatible with Vista, Microsoft’s newest operating system, says the BBC. Like we couldn’t have guessed…