Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and NME and viral marketing

I had to give this bloglet that heading so that Erietta would come visit. She only sees the headings in her aggregator.

From NMA.co.uk written by Jessica Phillips :

NME teams with Sony Walkman for tenth anniversary
Specialist music site NME.com is teaming up with Sony Walkman to launch a national talent competition as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations.

The two brands are looking for Britain’s best new band, inviting unsigned acts from across the country to upload tracks to the Web site, while asking visitors and NME magazine readers to vote online for their favourites.

Site visitors are also encouraged to actively promote their favoured acts by viral marketing. The winning band will be asked to showcase its material by supporting a raft of established bands at NME’s exclusive tenth birthday party later this summer. Dedicated promoters will also be invited to the show.

Sony is using the Breaking Bands competition to support the launch of its latest compact Flash memory MP3 Walkman, committing its entire launch budget to the project. Meanwhile NME is promoting it across its web site and magazine with a range of marketing and editorial activities.

We were talking last night that bands only make their money from T-shirt sales. Don’t you love it when companies get their customers to do their marketing/advertising/promotions work for them? It used to be by t-shirts for the tribe. Now its hyperconsumers creating ads. Whatever did happen to ned’s atomic dustbin? (Erietta wants to know). Well I can now answer that – they have a MySpace site (of course) and their own domain (of course) with a fans’ forum for dialogue (with 488 registered users). They are still number one in groovy t-shirts on NME or somewhere. Do you still have one? T-shirts of funky bands have a long tail. My mum would say too long…

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