In an interesting and innovative twist, Dixons have teamed up with Pulse Rated, a Internet radio station, to fill up the empty space on new MP3 players with tracks from unsigned bands.
The 60 unsigned bands – none of which you’re likely to have heard of before – were shortlisted by Pulse Rated from more than 10,000 wannabes, and Dixons will load a freebie tune from each on selected MP3 players.
The music covers a huge range of genres including pop, rock, dance, R&B and hip-hop (no death metal?).
Bryan Magrath, stores and marketing director at Dixons, was honest about the music on offer: “It is an indication of the rate at which technology is moving that just two years ago an initiative like this wouldn’t have been considered. We won’t be giving Simon Cowell sleepless nights yet, but we do believe we can play a role in helping break new and emerging music talent.”
Richard LaBrum, chairman of Pulse Group, commented: “This promotion is an incredible opportunity for these up-and-coming acts to get their music listened to by a much wider audience.”
We expect this initiative to increase our already impressive tally of artists offered recording deals as a result of our activities – all of which are provided totally free of charge to the artists,” he added with a plug-tastic air.
Anything that gives enterprising bands an opportunity to be heard outside their immediate fanbase can only be good for consumers and the band themselves, so we like the sound of this a lot.
Unless the next MP3 player we get comes with a load of boy band tosh, of course.
The first players preloaded with unsigned bands will be the 512MB and 1GB Logik MP3 players, retailing at £39.99 (~$70, ~€58) and £64.99 (~$113, ~€95) respectively.
Could you tell me how bands go about uploading their tracks onto i tunes or napster