The Nominees are....

Welcome to this edition of The Gen, where we will embark on a journey through all current music news from the North East and further afield.

This week, we take a closer look at music services based ‘in the cloud’, watch Mercury rising, and travel onwards to The Futureheads asking you to select tracks for their A Cappella album alongside much, much more from the world of digital, recorded and live music.

Read on and don’t forget to generate debate by letting us know what you think and sending us suggestions for stories.

Team Gen.
 

Mercury Prize - Generates Debate

The nominations for the 2010 Barclaycard Mercury Prize were announced this week, with Dizzee Rascal and The xx both taking an early lead as joint favourites to win. To find out which other albums were nominated and to have your say, read on.

The complete list and current odds are as follows:

Dizzee Rascal – Tongue N' Cheek (4/1)
The xx – xx (4/1)
Paul Weller – Wake Up the Nation (6/1)
Corinne Bailey Rae – The Sea (6/1)
Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More (6/1)
Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can (6/1)
Foals – Total Life Forever (8/1)
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (8/1)
Biffy Clyro – Only Revolutions (8/1)
Villagers – Becoming a Jackal (10/1)
Kit Downes Trio – Golden (10/1)
I Am Kloot – Sky at Night (10/1)

The winner will be announced during a ceremony in London on 7 September. Last year’s winner was Speech Debelle, whilst previous Mercury winners include PJ Harvey, Klaxons and Elbow.

Nominations are chosen by a selected panel of music industry executives, musicians, journalists and other UK taste-makers.

Dizzee Rascal previously won the award in 2003 with his debut album, Boy in da corner.

For a Spotify mix tape compiled by Generator and featuring nominated artists alongside previous winners click here .

Generate debate: What are your thoughts on the list? Which albums should have been up there? Who is your money on and what is your favourite album on the list? Despite definitely generating album sales for the nominated artists, especially the less well known ones, is the prize becoming increasingly less relevant to music fans? Did it have a huge impact on Speech Debelle’s career? What does the M in M People stand for? Be sure to let us know what you think.

Richard Russell in Conversation

This year’s Know How seminar series was a huge success, with large audiences and lively discussions on everything from rights management and new platforms to DIY and reliance on traditional media organisations.

Highlights included Richard Russell (XL Recordings) in conversation with Tony Wadsworth (BPI), and panels comprising of industry veterans Alison Wenham (AIM) and Jon Webster (MMF) and artists Lukas Wooller (Maxïmo Park), Ross Millard (The Futureheads) and Jon McClure (Reverend and the Makers).

Filmed highlights from the talks can now be viewed online where you can also see image galleries from the events.

The Know How will return in 2011.

Exclusive - Maximo Park to write concept album?

At a recent Generator SPEAR:TALK event in Middlesbrough, Maximo Park dropped some hints about where the band are headed next. Read on to find out how their future direction may confound fans of the huge North East pop act.

Speaking about new songs played at a riotous intimate gig at Inside Out in Darlington recently, singer Paul Smith said: “I would really like to write a concept album. My writing has always been very personal in the past and there are a few things I’ve written recently that I’m trying to bend to meet a concept”.

The singer joked that the concept album may involve capes and added, somewhat intriguingly: “I am going to grow designer stubble and play the keytar!”

This came to light as part of an insightful talk given by Smith and keyboard player Lukas Wooller as part of a Generator SPEAR Maximo Park special, in which the band revealed that they are currently outside of a record contract and are going to record a new album before deciding on how it will be released.

“There are more options now than when we first came out, with the way the industry has changed” said Wooller. Speaking about the recent remix project that Maximo Park put out through NARC. magazine in collaboration with Generator, Wooller said: “In the end we got 35 remixes back and had some amazing results. It was like somebody giving you a really nice unexpected Christmas present”.

To read the full transcript, go here.

To hear all of the 'Quicken the Heart’ remixes and to find out more about Maximo Park, go to their website.

Jukebox Jury!

A Gateshead based father and son team accused of defrauding the music industry by thousands of pounds were handed collective jail sentences of over four years this week.

Malcolm Wylie, and his son Peter set up a series of companies, including AAA, which supplied unlicensed jukeboxes with illegally downloaded material on them to businesses across the region.

During the trial, it emerged that although the company had consistently included the relevant PPL and PRS license fees in quotations, they had not made any payments to either organisation and had therefore defrauded the industry of an estimated £550,000.

In a landmark legal case brought by the BPI and PPL, it was ruled that the pair are to face jail as a result, on the grounds of distributing infringing copyright work.

Malcolm Wylie was sentenced to three years and banned from taking the position of Director for ten years and his son was given a nine-month and a 15-month sentence to run concurrently.

A third defendant, William Ross was handed a 36-week prison sentence.

The judge delivering the sentences at Newcastle Crown Court said: “Intellectual property is property and stealing it is a crime.” David Wood, BPI’s Director of Anti-Piracy said in a statement: “Their actions have not only harmed the music industry but also those landlords who, in difficult economic times, believed they were paying for a legitimate service when in fact they were also being exploited”.

The case and the sentencing is a landmark in the resolution of record industry licensing disputes in the UK.

Transmission - the NEw wave

Following an appeal to young artists in the North East, more than 75 acts submitted their music to Generator to be considered to play at Transmission - the NEw wave in front of an all ages audience and panel guests from broadcasting and established bands. The lineup has now been confirmed and comprises some of the best young bands in the region.

This event is part of the SPEAR:Transmission programme, running throughout 2010-11, which looks at the past, present and future of music broadcasting. 

Transmission - The NEw wave's final lineup includes Polarsets, Chased by Wolves, Vinyl Jacket, Matadors , Toyger, Ajimal and Cult Image.

The chosen acts will perform at The Discovery Museum in Newcastle on Saturday, 4th September for a specially invited panel including Tom Robinson (BBC 6 Music, The Tom Robinson Band), Bob Fischer (BBC Tees) and Kingsley Chapman (The Chapman Family) and an all ages crowd.

Tom Robinson’s involvement in North East Beat Unsigned last year meant that he jumped at the opportunity to hear and advise the NEw wave of North East talent this time round.

Tom said: “I was really pleased to be invited to sit on the panel for the last event and it was excellent to listen to the bands that played that day and I’ve stayed in touch with Generator, who have continued to recommend music for my show on BBC 6 Music.”

“Tyne & Wear is one of three BBC regions that doesn’t have a specialist BBC Introducing show, so it’s even more important to give profile to undiscovered artists in the area.

“It’s not as if there’s a shortage of new musical talent in the area. Forget the big names such as The Animals, Sting and Maxïmo Park. In the last two years we’ve been deluged on my BBC 6 Music show with fine new music from the region and I’m looking forward to discovering more.”

Peer To Peer?

Feargal Sharkey, former frontman of The Undertones and head of UK Music could be set to receive a life peerage from Prime Minister David Cameron for services to music.

According to reports in the Sunday Mirror, Cameron is “deeply impressed with Feargal and his knowledge, leadership and commitment when it comes to representing the music business”.

Feargal has been a central figure representing the music industry in debates around internet piracy and was key to the campaign to save BBC 6 Music.

Insiders suggest it is likely that if he took up any offer he would sit as an independent crossbench peer in the House Of Lords rather than attaching himself to one particular party.

Pitchfork dig ‘Altered Zones’

Influential US music site Pitchfork have launched a unique new sister site that aims to serve as a focal point for the most successful underground music blogs, on a global scale.

‘Altered Zones’, which launched last week, will focus on “leftfield pop, experimental, and home-recorded sounds” and its contributors will be a team of bloggers whose individual sites have proved to be unique and worthwhile in relation to exposing new leftfield music.

Features will include artist interviews and profiles on new labels alongside content and images sourced from various blogs and Tumblr sites, in addition to live feeds from contributor’s core sites.

Pitchfork is a Chicago based site, launched in 1995 which focuses on breaking new artists. In recent years, the site has become increasingly high profile and is considered to have been instrumental in breaking bands such as Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene to a wider audience. The organisers also run an annual music festival in the US under the Pitchfork brand.

Click here to check out ‘Altered Zones’.

Generate debate: Could this umbrella approach point towards the future of music blogs? Are Pitchfork trusted gatekeepers, filtering content and highlighting quality within the overwhelming amount of blogs online now? Will this become a focal point for discovering new music? Are blogs increasingly more influential, considering the continuing demise of traditional music journalism?

Futureheads go A cappella

Sunderland art punks The Futureheads are asking fans to use Twitter and Facebook to nominate songs from their back catalogue for a forthcoming a cappella album.

New versions of their existing songs will be re-recorded for the entirely vocal album later this year.

Announcing the project simultaneously through the band’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, singer Barry Hyde said: “We are making an a cappella album and want you to help us decide which of our songs to do! Get your requests in now! o-oo o-oo o-a-o e etc..!”.

Hyde also suggested in tweets that the band would follow this up with a covers album.

To suggest a track for the a cappella album, you need to post the band a Twitter message, including their tag @thefutureheads , and the track title.

The Sunderland band hit the top ten in 2005 with a now famous cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’, which included a distinctive a cappella intro.

Watch the brilliant new animated video for single ‘I can do that’, taken from 4th album ‘The Chaos’, released earlier this year go here.

To find out more about releases and upcoming live shows, go to the Futureheads website.

A cloudy future for music?

A recent survey of iTunes customers has revealed that a high percentage of music fans would be interested in paying for a music service based ‘in the cloud’.

Of course, ‘In the cloud’ is the current buzzword for on-demand services based on the Internet which use shared resources and information to deliver content to a variety of devices.

A ‘cloud’ system would enable fans to upload existing collections of albums to a server, from which it could accessed and streamed to other computers, mobile handsets, MP3 devices, games consoles etc..

This would work in a similar way to Google documents and calendar, which can be used essentially anywhere that the user can log-in to their account and easily synched to other devices.

Research conducted in the US this week by NPD Group indicated that, out of 50m users of iTunes, iPod touch and the iPhone, 7-8m would consider paying up to £6.50 a month for such services.

Major technology players such as Apple and Google are expected to unveil ‘cloud’ based services later in the year.

Pop Icon David Bowie wrote an article in the New York Times in 2002: “'The absolute transformation of everything we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years. Music, itself, is going to become like running water or electricity”.

Generate Debate: Will this take the world one step closer to Bowie’s prescient comment that music would become like a utility piped out from a central source? Who will be the first company to deliver a user-friendly cloud service with mass appeal? Would you be interested in subscribing to such a service? Is this a response to the overwhelming variety of devices that can now play music?

BBC Introducing Tees Off

BBC Tees are all set to host an exciting free event for new and emerging music acts in the region at the end of this month. Taking place between 6-7pm on Friday 30 July at The Georgian Theatre in Stockton, the ‘Introducing’ event will aim to provide up and coming artists with some insight into how they can interact with the wider industry.

Bob Fischer from BBC Tees is on the panel alongside Paul Burns from Tees Music Alliance, Claire Thomas from the national BBC Introducing scheme and regional live promoter Henry Carden , who also runs independent label Pay for the Piano.

To find out more on the BBC Introducing plans click here and to book a place, email the organisers.

Stuart Cable Memorial Single

In honour of his life’s work, Global Music are proud to be releasing the Official Stuart Cable Memorial Single, ‘Former Mining Town’, by Killing For Company on 25th July 2010.

Close friend and former Stereophonics band-mate, Kelly Jones, is amongst those lending their support: “Myself, Richard and the boys would like everyone to join us in supporting Killing For Company’s charity single, ‘Former Mining Town’. Stuart was our lifelong friend and brother; he will be sadly missed. Lets give him and his boys a final shout, and also to Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity we have supported for ten years with Roger Daltrey. Thank you. Long live rock’n’roll.”

‘Former Mining Town’ was written and recorded by Killing For Company in 2009 and will be available for download only from July 25th 2010 via iTunes and all other major online stores. The proceeds will be donated towards the charities, Teenage Cancer Trust and Tŷ Hafan, the family hospice for young lives.

WE7 adds rolling news

In what seems to be an attempt to compete with traditional radio, UK on-demand streaming service WE7 have added a news ‘track’ function to their site.

Listeners can now select broadcasts any time, interspersing news with their favourite music and there will also be the capacity to add the feature to play-lists. WE7 have formed a partnership with the Guardian Media Group to deliver this and the output will be created by GMG’s Real Radio team and updated in real time.

Steve Purdham, chief executive and co-founder of We7, said in a statement: “This partnership marries high quality news production and delivery with the new paradigm of on-demand music. Radio and Cloud based music can learn a great deal from each other.”

Mercury Rising

Click here for your Mercury Music Spotify Mix Tape compiled by Generator featuring nominated artists alongside previous winners.