You can now vote for little old NYUB at the BT music awards. Go on, you know you want to.

Prospect magazine has a great article on bands taking CD & merchandising distribution into their own hands.

Link

The Tate Modern Museum in London has just launched a new initiative called Your Tate Track. The initiative is aimed at unsigned bands and musicians aged between 16 – 24. Your Tate Track asks unsigned musicians to choose a work of art from a selection on splay at Tate Modern and then to write a track in response to it. The public will vote on submitted tracks and the 20 most popular will go before a judging panel which will include, among others, Graham Coxon, Roll Deep, Basement Jaxx and Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens.
 
The winning track will be installed in the gallery through headphones next to the work which inspired it and will be streamed on Tate's website. Tracks can be submitted until the 31 August.

Growing up in New Zealand during the 80s meant subsiding on a diet of American & UK pop music. Local acts did get radio airplay but video was a whole different matter. New Zealand did not have access to MTV so we had to make do with a weekly Sunday night show called 'Radio with Pictures'.  It was on late at 11pm (NZ did not have 24 hour TV so all the stations shut down at midnight). It was a typical NZ do-it-yourself experience with few frills and often akward interviews but it got small bands video airplay.

Check out this Radio With Pictures interview featuring Neil Finn & Dave Dobbyn.