Since citizensound set up, we have been providing more and more help to artists: From old school A&R services to fanbase management, from songwriting help to brand sponsorship and revenue generation ideas. Which is why we set up our Artist Development division.

Then we met MIA ROSE, a talented singer/songwriter and a youtube phenomenon. Besides being the most subscribed to musician on youtube in the UK, she also features on the Top 5 all-time list globally on youtube. Since she started 3 years ago, she has had over 100 million views on the net, with each video she puts up gaining well over a 1m views. Her fanbase is 50% teenager, 50% adult. A brand’s dream.

And then we met around 7 weeks ago and hit it off.

So here we are representing her. Paul Martin worked with MIA ROSE in the studio alongside honorary citizen and producer Tyrell to record her Xmas single. The citizen Nick Watt meanwhile got moving on the management of the digital presence and online revenue strategy with the help of new citizen Martim. Our Lisbon based citizen, Mariana Duarte Silva, started handling things in MIA ROSE’s home country Portugal. Meanwhile, Simon and myself got working on the brand opportunities.

citizensound as A&R, executive producer, revenue generator, promotional agent, digital strategist, fanbase co-ordinator and a lot more. Yet critically, it is the energy and ideas of MIA ROSE herself that makes this really work.

Ideas flow from her as easy as popular songs and videos. Plus she is open to ideas fro mus and her fanbase too.

In the last six weeks we have organised:

• A competition for 5 London based fans to join her for a day out in London (Thanks to Visit London, The London Eye, The Original Tour open top bus company, Ripley’s London). A 6th fan turned up all the way from Poland!
• Live video chats, the first of which got 27 countries online (from U.S and Peru through Europe to India, Dubai and Malaysia) and 8,000 messages in 90 minutes.
• Fan competition to design the record sleeve for the Xmas Single.
• MIA ROSE being signed to Models 1, the most respected model agency in the UK under their celebrity division

But to promote the single, we needed a video. Thanks to friends out in Brazil, MIA ROSE headed off to Rio to shoot an atypical Xmas video.

Last night the video went up on MIA ROSE’s youtube channel.

Here is the video:

In the first 12 hours, this video has achieved these stunning stats:

8,372 views

1,513 ratings

In only the first 6 hours, this video achieved:

Number 2 - Top Rated Today - Music GLOBAL

Number 2 - Top Rated This Week - Music UK

Number 8 - Top Rated This Week - Music GLOBAL

Number 3 - Most Discussed (any topic) Today - UK

Top 50  - Most Viewed Today - GLOBAL, UK, Germany, Canada

Top 100 - Most Viewed Today - Brazil, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland

Now the trick is to convert online popularity into sales for this hugely popular youtube artist.

No marketing budget, no machine. Just MIA ROSE, us and her fans spreading the word.

Might not involve safety pins and shouting, but still VERY VERY DIY.

When I stood up to start the panel at Venice, I was looking for a way to immediately frame the topic so that the audience understood what they were about to sit through.

So I mentioned a journey I took on the 137 bus in south London one day…

There were five kids on the back of the bus. One had recorded some beats on his laptop the night before. He had uploaded them to his phone to play them to his friends on the bus on the way to school. The friends told him which beats they liked and which ones they didn’t. The kid then deleted the ones from his phone that his friends didn’t like. The ones they liked, he bluetoothed the tunes to them all.

Now for me this summed up what is DIY culture, and why for me the rise of DIY music culture is so much more than a mere fad. Right on the back of the bus, I witnessed the CREATION, DISTRIBUTION, MARKETING and CONSUMPTION of music amongst those five kids.

And it happened without the help of anyone from the ‘music industry’. The help of handset and laptop manufacturers maybe, but no-one from the ‘music industry’. This is as pure a version of DIY music as one could imagine.

This is the challenge for the music industry to work through. How are they relevant to the kids on the back of that bus?

It is also for brands to work out if they wish to get involved in music in ways other than writing a massive cheque to a major artist and hoping that the celebrity factor rubs off on the brand. (Don’t get me wrong, such deals can be highly successful, benefiting fan, artist and the brand, but involvement within the DIY culture can provide different benefits for the brand, artist and fan).

Seeing this DIY music culture in action really excited me. This gave me the inspiration to dig deeper into DIY music culture. First, I carried out some research in 2007 with Dr. Gauti Sigthorsson, lecturer at Greenwich University, and now an honorary citizen of citizensound. Anyone interested in finding out more on this, I will post up some interesting snippets we found out in later posts.

Nick and I also ran a panel at In The City in 2007 on this very topic, exploring what artists need as support functions in order to survive as a DIY artist. As an example of DIY music culture, we invited Rob McCulloch to join us on stage, a guy who invited his fans to pay what they want for his CD…18 months before Radiohead. Average price for his CD was £11/€15/$22! Admittedly smaller audience, but impressive nevertheless.

This and more inspired citizensound to choose this topic for the panel. But it all started with those 5 kids on the 137 bus in London…

Come back to the blog as we will be sharing more on this.

Well, our panel at the venice Festival of Media 2008 went really well.

The topic was a great one (if we say so ourselves), but what made the session were the great panellists and the audience.

There is nothing worse for me than a panel that answers with Yes, No or Maybe. We all want a panel that is inspired to really let loose. We were blessed with four people who didn’t hold back at all.

So a huge thank you to:
John Ingham, CEO of ESP and MOG blogger extraordinaire;
Maarten Steinkamp, SonyBMG CEO Continental Europe and a man who speaks his mind;
Martin Stiksel, Last FM CEO and someone who forgets more about how people relate to music than I know;
Jon Webster, Chairman of the Music Managers Forum, and a man who held back from sharing too many stories on stage.

One person in the audience told me after that he couldn’t mistake this panel as a music panel as everyone swore freely, but more importantly, expressed themselves very openly.

It seemed to inspire the audience too, as they were fantastic. When we over-ran by 15 minutes, I invited the audience to attend the next session in the main hall. I said I was happy to stay, so did the panelists. The audience stayed put, leading to overrun by 40 minutes…causing chaos for the organisers! (Sorry Clare, Charlie and everyone at CSquared!)

The questions just kept coming. It was fantastic. So thanks to Lucy from Diesel, Steve King and John Taylor from ZenithOptimedia, Graham Duff from Universal McCann, the guys from Nokia Procurement (I know you were out there!), the fantastic lady from Future Magazines (contact me please!!!), Olivia from Media and Marketing, Mariana from CSquared, Martin Sambrook from Billetts and Tom Bowman from BBC Worldwide, the guy at the back who asked about Apple, and everyone else who I have forgotten!

Joy Asibey recently joined citizensound after working on global brand comms and music campaigns for everyone from Aquarius Records, Motorola, Amnesty International and Miller. She brings her flair for project management, love of afrokitsch, and passion for music to the team.