Bandstocks: Cool site, cool business and a free Patrick Wolf gig

A few weeks ago, I discovered Bandstocks via an article about Patrick Wolf releasing his new album, Battle, by using the site.  The basic premise is this: you invest £10 (per share) in a specific artist’s forthcoming album and when it comes out you get a high quality download of the album and share 30% of the receipts shared amongst all of the other investors.  Bottom line – no ‘record company’ to speak of and a much better deal for fans and artists.  I’d have bought the album anyway so figured that for £10 I’d happily pay in advance for the chance to turn a tiny profit if the album does well.

Betting or investing?  They’re kinda the same, really, so this was mainly fun for me.  (And it’s FSA regulated so couldn’t be a total scam.)

THEN… yesterday, I got an email inviting me to a private gig that that Patrick would be playing for his investors next week.  How cool is that?  I’m really excited and definitely feel like I’ve had more than my tenners worth already and I’m very excited about this.  If Bandstocks can forge closer relationships between artists and audiences, it’s going to be a great thing.

Here’s Patrick talking about Bandstocks on YouTube:

Proper Messy and Steven Fry: Cool stuff the BBC is doing with mobile messaging

Happy New Year, gentle readers.

I wanted to write a quick post to flag up something very cool that another part of the BBC has just launched using mobile messaging (SMS).  Right up front, I should say I had nothing to do with this so can’t take credit for it.

Mobile Phone Drama

Proper Messy is a mobile-phone based drama for teenagers, proudced by BBC Switch.  Along with video content, the service lets users get messages from the character of their choice and lets them interact with the plot.  I won’t say too much more since the story is live right now but look out for some cool stuff here. 

With SMS being such a pervasive and natural medium for teenagers, it seems like this could be a big hit.   The messages I’ve seen thus far have me hooked – I’m dying to know who was involved with the fire…

 

In more news of things I can’t take credit for, Stephen Fry (a famous BBC presenter) has been Twittering away on his journey leading up to his next series, Last Chance to See.  Which is about his quest to see endangered sepcies for, perhaps, the last time before they become extinct (or not).  Last week he  linked one of his Tweets to the official BBC Mobile site for Last Chance to See and sent a load of traffic our way (thanks, Stephen!).  Here, he talks about why he enjoys Twittering so much.  He’s got 50,000 followers already – Lily Allen, eat your heart out (she’s only got 648 followers).

And speaking of BBC talent on Twitter, here’s links to Steven’s page as well as the one from BBC bad-boy, Jonathan Ross.

That said, Twitter isn’t all fun and games – the BBC used it for its news coverage on US Election night by having members of the BBC bureau in Washington, DC using it.  We also used it during the Mumbai attacks – here’s two links to posts about it from editors here, including one about where it might not have gone so well.

Twitter and a classic picture by Rory Cellan-Jones

Mumbai, Twitter and Live Updates by Steve Herrmann