Equal-Works

From the beginning of the project, Clever Cherry liaised with musicians, offering technical help/support to those uploading their music onto the site, and publicised via the national and Birmingham media (radio and TV, articles, leaflets, CDs). They also made sure that arts partners and blue chip companies were aware of the web site, and put out information on the service.

Clever Cherry also created a www.birminghamusic.com MySpace page in order to help contact more local bands and to bring more people to the birminghamusic site itself. This received an enormous amount of attention from both bands and promoters, eventually boasting over 1400 bands, promoters, artists and music fans.

An online competition was held, for a local rock band to support Ocean Colour Scene at a sold out gig at Carling Academy in Birmingham. Press coverage for the competition was provided by BBC WM, BRMB, Heart FM, Evening Mail and BBC Midlands Today amongst others. Over 100,000 votes were cast.

Clever Cherry also organised (or had stands/stages at) a range of gigs to further promote the bands.

• At Artsfest 2005, birminghamusic.com had its own stage, which garnered a vast amount of coverage in the local press. Through this increase in awareness of the radio station and therefore of local talent, Birmingham band The Ladykillers were heard on the Birminghamusic.com radio stream and offered a ten-part commercial deal from ABC, a compilation album deal and airplay on a Californian radio station.

• Four local bands performed at the Birmingham Sessions Rock event in the Birmingham Barfly: Liner, Deluka, The Ripps and Murdoch.

• Vijay Kishore, Jayne Powell and Everest all performed at the Birmingham Sessions Jazz/Folk event at the Glee Club. The Birmingham Session events were covered by regional press but, more importantly, Fused magazine covered them as well, including interviews and pictures in their January 2006 edition. Fused has a monthly circulation of 20,000.

• Birminghamusic.com ‘Noise Pollution’ Rock gig was part of the academy’s On Song Festival, held at Bar Academy, which showcased four local rock bands.

• The last event held was Music Live 2007, which showcased 30 bands of a variety of genres playing to audiences totalling 26,000 over a three-day period.