7BitArcade Blog @7bitarcade - Tumblr Blog

7BitArcade: 2011 - 2015

Well, this has been a long time coming and probably won’t actually surprise anyone but we’re closing down.

A few people I’ve mentioned this to have asked the same question: “why?!” Well, it’s pretty simple; 7BitArcade isn’t the site it used to be. At one point I remember working with a team of 20+ writers, with regular reviews, event coverage, original content but now we’re lucky if we have a couple of articles a week on the site. It’s not really anyone’s fault (okay, maybe it’s my fault in places) - when we started a lot of our writers were students getting a bit of experience before attempting to get jobs in this field of work. We’ve never been able to pay writers, the site isn’t exactly profitable, and so keeping people onboard wasn’t exactly easy. As a lot of our writers got towards the end of their courses, or moved into the working world, obviously they got busier and had less time to review albums, go to shows or come up with original features. Originally this wasn’t a problem, new people would come in and things kept on rolling but, over the years, this has got harder and harder to maintain - I put this down to age more than anything else, it’s not like I can go out and recruit first year students as writers now. Editorially we all got busier too, we all have lives and jobs and it was never easy to balance everything and keep it moving at a pace we’d have liked. Every so often we’d get a flurry of activity but it’d always plateau at a slow pace. The last slump has lasted a bit too long and we took the decision to start preparing to close.

It’s honestly pretty gutting to be doing this, which is why I’ve perhaps put it off for longer than I should have. 7BitArcade has been the last four years of my life, it’s introduced me to a lot of people I’d have otherwise never met (mostly for the better!), it’s provided opportunities I never thought I’d be part of and of course it brought massive highs when it did well (which, all negativity aside, it often did).

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s been involved in the site in some way or another - it’s been a rocky road, for sure, but a hell of a lot of people made this possible. Adam, for setting up this monstrosity and eventually moving from a gaming oriented site to an entirely music site and then attempting to experiment in other fields. He set all of this up, worked his absolute arse off to get contact and to take every opportunity to get interesting content. Previous editors; Natt, Andy, Harry “The Powerhouse” Bandell (If you read this, I hope you’re well), Lindsay on the live front - they all put in the equivalent of a full time job’s worth of hours to make this happen and to get it going. Thank you. When it came to sessions we did some excellent things considering our size, thanks largely to Michael who was happy to film anything at any time without any fuss and always got good results. Thanks to Alex too, while not officially part of the site he essentially hosted our live sessions and made everything sound excellent. There’s been too many writers and contributors over the years to individually pick on them but thanks for giving up a part of your time to write about stuff you love (or hate). Thanks to our friends at PRs, labels, bands, for giving us stuff to write about, sorting out stuff that we still can’t believe happened (a session with Owls, man. Did that actually happen?)

You’re all excellent and I hope everything is working out great for you.

If you’re still reading this I’d like to share some of my highlights over the years:

-Harry pissing off TWIABP: https://www.facebook.com/twiabp/posts/122324341263710 (”You’re a pisser Harry”)

-That time Adam text me because Frank Turner posting a link to the excellent interview with Rob crashed the website: http://www.7bitarcade.com/article/10404/being-frank-an-interview-with-frank-turner/

-Our idea of frequent meetings being held at Camden Wetherspoons. They might not let us keep our trophy there but damn, what a sensible location.

-Sessions. We got to film some ridiculous ones. Owls was mindblowing. Johnny Foreigner was a fun lesson in how to actually do live sessions (a bit of a mess on our part, in retrospect but thanks massively to them for allowing us to film it as our first live session). Dingus was crazy. We had fun doing acoustic sessions too, filming at festivals, that insane Human Pyramids sessions. These things were all incredibly hard work but I feel proud watching them. And I rarely feel pride.

-Festivals. Having a 7BitArcade stage at ArcTanGent 2014 was pretty excellent but getting to cover festivals was amazing. From the Alternative Escape right up to Glastonbury, we covered them all. I still can’t believe we were allowed to, in some cases.

-The parties, the people. While I’m god awful at keeping up to date with people, 7Bit has had some excellent folk involved with it over the years. Our old awards shows and Adam/Lindsay’s legendary halloween parties gave opportunities to find out how excellent everyone is in person and were definitely some of the most fun nights out ever.

All in all though, I think we gave this thing a good run. We’ve covered a hell of a lot over the past four years, been to a lot of places, met some interesting people. Thank you all for being part of it, even if it was just reading the site. It’s sad to say goodbye but it’s for the best.

Bye.

For now, I bid you adieu...

Hey all,

I never really thought there would be a time in which I would be writing such a thing on the 7BitArcade Tumblr-slash-announcement-board-- I always imagined that I’d either be culled off mercilessly within the first few months or be with 7Bit until the day it imploded in on itself (neither has happened, fortunately). But today, I’m here to announce that I-- Natt Day-- am officially leaving 7BitArcade.

I came in to 7Bit as green as they come-- I’d written a handful of pieces for a few student publications over the years, but I had no real experience. I don’t think when Adam and Daddsy welcomed me to the team they really knew what they were letting themselves in for (more fools them). And I subsequently drove them-- and the rest of the writing team-- round the bend with my incessant chatter, need for babysitting and endless energy/enthusiasm which bordered on exhausting to watch. I’m sure the team didn’t expect to adopt a puppy when they welcomed me in to 7Bit, but there you go.

That was three years ago now. And well, what a 1095~ish days it has been. 7BitArcade opened up loads of avenues I never imagined possible for a PhD Scientist who should, for all intents and purposes, be safely ensconced in labs most of the time. I now have stories galore that can be put in to my autobiography (coming soon) and for that, I will always be thankful to 7Bit for.

I also have to thank the teams that have been with me through the years and somehow not managed to kill me (it’s been close)-- from my freshers to this, my graduation. Firstly to Adam, who really should’ve ran screaming after my first ‘20 email, I don’t get this episode’. To Daddsy who spent about 90% of my time at 7Bit bickering with me, but somehow we managed to get shit done. To Michael, who even though he’s now in a different time-zone still doesn’t fail to make everyone laugh-- or creep them out. To Andy who writes the most unabashedly brutal pieces ever but never compromises.

Thanks also have to go to all the PR people that have emailed me over the years. You’ve all been incredibly accommodating and great to work with and certainly made my life that much easier

So what's happening to 7BitArcade I hear you ask? Well, my departure really doesn't change anything except Daddsy no longer has to put 'co' in front of any of his titles. I know that between Daddsy, Michael and Andy 7BitArcade is in safe and capable hands.

As for me? I'm off to pastures new. I have 10 months of my PhD left which-- as you can imagine-- is getting terribly nervewracking and just a tad stressful. I may also continue writing though keeping myself firmly in the writers category (opposed to writer -> feature editor -> editor that happened here)-- so I may just catch some of you around in future. If you wish to keep me in the loop, my [email protected] email address will be working for a while-- but you can also contact me on [email protected] or alternatively drop me a tweet/follow over on Twitter where I'm @nattatouillez.

On that note my friends, I believe it's come to my final sign off. Again thank you, and if you got to the end of this message-- you're a hero.

Natt

The Politics section is dead. (Or: On trying something new, failing at it but not really caring because at least you tried)

Hello,

So a couple of months ago you may have realised we added a Politics section to the site? I was asked a few times why I didn’t address the reasons for this when it went live, as it’s such a rapid departure from our site’s usual topics. I disagree with that, I think our political system, as something that affects every one of us is totally relevant. Besides, we’ve had weirder stuff on the site before; anyone remember the failed wrestling section?

But anyway, we weren’t really sure how to make a move into politics writing, partly because, other than a strong interest and years of hateful rage, we don’t have a wide range of political knowledge. We have a couple of writers who are very knowledgeable, David’s pieces made excellent reading and Andy’s guide to voting was informative and witty in equal measures but on the whole it would be hard to rival the masses of articles from press who have writers who specialise in the topic. When we discussed this, in Camden Ice Wharf - the home of all our discussion, we decided to approach our local candidates for interviews. This works in our favour - we can come up with a series of questions to ask to find out a bit about the people running and a bit about party policies in advanced, try and remove any bias on our end, and carry out interviews by email, face to face or telephone with no real trouble. Or so we thought. So, our first issues:

Politicians are ridiculously hard to get responses from

I guess I should have seen this one coming; when you think politicians you don’t think of fast responses or honest answers. We had varied luck across our constituencies but using my own, Colchester, as an example I had pretty varied responses. I only actually got one interview back complete, from our Green Party candidate. From my MP at the time, Bob Russell, I received nothing back what so ever. From the labour MP I received an email asking if we can do a face to face interview; I replied the same day to agree with his suggested time and never heard from him again, despite chasing. From my conservative candidate, who is now our MP I was informed this was underway although I then never heard back. The oddest one was the Christian People’s Alliance who’s leader, Sidney Cordle, responded instead of our local candidate. Interesting to read, albeit slightly terrifying as a left leaning individual, but not that helpful when it came to local policies. When we received answers though, we had another problem...

Politicians don’t like to appear human

As people who care about the arts, as a broad topic, we’re interested in whether our candidates share our interest. Asking them about favourite records, what films they’ve seen recently or whether they’re interested in video games wasn’t because we’d judge them based on their taste it’s because human beings have an interest in these things. Every time we got a response that said “This isn’t relevant” was incredibly infuriating; being a human, having interests is relevant. To fob it off because “I’m standing for Parliament [...] not celebrity big brother” not only ignores any human element, it makes you sound ridiculous.

Question Time is boring, which mixed with the time it’s aired makes it hard to get into

We tried liveblogging Question Time as we’ve enjoyed covering other TV shows before but it was pretty difficult because most the guests are boring and half of what’s said appears to be lies but it’s hard to fact-check in real time. I think the show would be a better platform to get more people interested in politics if they moved it forward by an hour and maybe livened it up a little bit.

So, to wrap this up

We don’t regret trying to run this section, this election was important. If we were to do this again, if we’re not too disheartened after five years of conservative leadership and if their removal of the human rights act and terrifyingly worded step up of anti-terror legislation (”For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”) allows us to talk about politics freely still, then we’d perhaps start earlier, maybe harass our local candidates a bit more. That’s five years from now though, something not to worry about now. For now, we’ve removed the section (the articles are still there). I think what’s important though is to keep an interest; the next five years will be difficult for a lot of people, the number of people reliant on food banks will go up. If you can afford to support people then do it. The Trussell Trust are taking donations which will help people affected by benefit rule changes who need food for their families. Argue with your local MP, email them, write to them, make sure your voice is heard.

They work for us, not the other way around. If you need help, speak to them. If you’re afraid what they’re doing will negatively affect people worse off than yourself then speak to to them.

Daddsy

ArcTanGent festival and 7BitArcade announce Stage Partnership

First of all, this post has been a long time coming. We have a banner now and everything for our stage. It's too much. it's far too much.

We're very humble here at 7BitArcade so being granted a stage partnership was huge news for us as it cemented a milestone in our timeline that we had long been working towards. 7BitArcade has been running for 3 years now, and hosting a festival stage was pencilled in as a significant goal right from the start. So now that we are here, and we have that stage. What the fuck are we going to do? That's a lie, we know exactly what we are going to do with every band who are playing the stage. Sessions bitch. Plus, with this news, 7BitArcade have decided to invest not just in equipment (3D cameras guys) but in getting some familiar faces along to help us on our journey to said math-rock utopia.

Video at ATG

Last years video coverage was incredible and we were so lucky & honoured to be asked to film the official promo video for ArcTanGent. This year, we will be doing more than that; so much more. If you spot us walking around with cameras, put on a show. Get involved in and be part of the documentary that we are shooting on the festival. 2014 will also be the year of sessions. The life changing Arcane Roots session from last year made team 7Bit realise that we are really damn good at shooting close ups of bands with guitars; Extreme zoom in on those fingers strumming is our speciality.

Team along for the ride

On the back of his incredible video work for The Math Rock Blog, we have asked Zarif Miah to join the 7BitArcade crew to do off the cuff, off the wall video segments with you the crowds and hopefully every band under the sun. Zarif is far too friendly for his own good so he will probably end up being fed rum all weekend by the 7Bit editorial team. If you missed his videos from last year, then why not re-find yourself this Monday with one of his best.

As well as Zarif, we have upped the number of photographers and video team roaming the site.

Last year, we had a huge amount of success with the 7BitArcade news segments that went live after each day of the festival. For those at home, it was a chance to see what they were missing at the festival; a combination of real news, parody and bands acting like heroes made sure that 7BitArcade news was a turning point in video and an idea that we are working on to turn into a weekly series.

To celebrate that fact, at ArcTanGent this year we are pleased to add Andy Crowder, or Sir Musical Mathematics to the news team who will be joining team 7BitArcade as a guest host. Musical Math are known far and wide for their incredible coverage of everything math-rock so we are pumped to have Andy on board to dry wit his way to success on the news team.

So if you see a lanyard with the 7BitArcade logo on, pose nicely for them as you may end up being in the official gallery of the event or even in upcoming videos!

ArcTanGent is nearly here. We'll be there.

New blood aplenty

The past few months have seen 7BitArcade grow massively in numbers with new writers applying to the site at least 3-4 times a week. It's great news and is something that all of us here find really encouraging and exciting, mainly as it means they may have heard how we treat writers different in an Internet writing world where writers are expected to write for free with little or no return. So first, let's chat about that.

How 7BitArcade progresses our team

Since the website started back in 2011, 7BitArcade has established a tradition of progressing everyone that has decided to write, podcast or product video for the site. We make sure that we are always giving constructive feedback to our writers and are always working to make sure that we are handling their every need. It doesn't just end there though. Our writers are guided through ever stage of their 7BitArcade career with opportunities to realise their end goal always suggested, e.g. the opportunity to cover a festival, to interview artists for university projects etc. When it comes to video, we see it the same way. Over the past year, we have carefully and precisely charted out course into the world of video production with small projects here and there before attacking our full 360 degree coverage of ArcTanGent festival last year. since then we have covered Great Escape festival for the third time producing divine music sessions as well as small documentaries/vox pops on the festival. This year, we intend to push ahead with our video magazine show idea, but as stated earlier, small steps that are precisely trodden.

Welcome Newbies

It's crazy that with the introduction of Slack, our writer retention and enthusiasm has increased massively. It might be half down to that, half down the pure intensity and love that our new writer base has for all of the mediums on the site. New writers will always bring a fresh burst too any website as well as making sure that those who have been languishing get a kick back into gear.

So let's say hello to our new writers.

Hello to...

Aaron Kent

Alice Priestly

Barney

Ben Gray

Dominic Carp

Email Waddell

Fran Hartley

Jack Cooper

Jacob Petterson

Jake Green

Lydia Ross

Mike McGourley

Trey Douglas

Zac Curran

What a great load of people.

Hey Tumblr, sorry it has been so long

We have neglected Tumblr a lot recently. It wasn't meant to be this way! We're sorry home of animated Gif's and Supernatural fans but we just got caught up in progressing the pursuit of exclusive music. Tough times there it really is; Swept away by post rock. Beaten up by shoegaze. Is that the right way around? Who knows. Either way, Tumblr we are back and so much has happened since we last chatted.

Games are back! TV & film are making their debut whilst Professional Wrestling is a field we are dabbling in. All of this swings the pendulum of thought to one question. Why is 7BitArcade returning to a content medium that it dropped a few years past?

It's pretty simple really

We have always loved games and we believed the time was right to slowly bring the medium back in to complement the quality music writing that we were & are creating. The video game market is changing all the time and we have got content creators on board who appreciate this; they appreciate that video content should be done without pretension but with a pure unadulterated love for the games they are playing. it's a refreshing outlook on the genre that we all know and love.

The plan is to build on a strong history of video game journalism and make sure that all of our writers will be appreciated for the work that they do.

So what about the music?

The music will never stop and there is no way in hell that we will let the quality of music writing drop. Instead we have actively been recruiting a number of top quality writers and video content producers to help with the next stage of 7BitArcade music. More on that in the near future.

Who is where and doing what

All change please. All change.

Since we last spoke, Adam Libonatti-Roche has dropped back from being a co-owner of the site and is now in charge of business & development due to taking the role of Tech Editor at The 405, hence making Jonathan Dadds the owner of 7BitArcade.

Natt Day remains as Editor & Track of the Day and Antony Lusmore continues to head up Band of the Day whilst also taking a firm grip on the Pro Wrestling section.

After working on the ArcTanGent project in 2013, Michael Williams has become our head of video production and will head up a number of huge projects that we are working on for 2014-2015.

That's it for today. We will have more over the next week. 7BitArcade out.

#7bitarcade #blog

7BitArcade at Great Escape 2013

It comes with great pleasure to say that 7Bit will be attending Great Escape this year and we are teaming up with some great promoters to put on a day of music that we guarantee will be THE closing night to the festival.

Great Escape is a big deal in the music world and at 7Bit, we believe that as a festival, it offers the most in regard to promotion for the website and for all of us, as individuals. 7Bit has always wanted to expand it's arms to include as many people, companies, groups as possible, so for Great Escape we found the best guys to tag along with.

Bad Math and Fools Paradise are both prominent in gig promotion in Brighton and London so it's a pleasure for us to be sponsoring this event. Bad Math put on their first Brighton gig in 2012 but since then, they have put on bands including Doctrines, Wot Gorilla and This Town Needs Guns; All great bands. They have an eye for great new music, just like we do here at 7Bit and a lot of their bands have been featured as a 7Bit band of the day.

Fools Paradise have put on some huge bands; Bear Calvary, Tellison, My First Tooth have all made an appearance on their lineups alongside an eclectic mix of other artists. This will be the first time 7Bit has teamed up with Fools Paradise and we are totally looking forward to it.

THE VENUE

Last year, 7Bit teamed up with Alcopop records for the Friday night to end all Friday nights at the PAV TAV, or Pavilion Tavern to those who want the full name. What occurred was one of the purest forms of party and good music at Great Escape, an evening that was not preceded by any bullshit whatever; something that SXSW can't even say it adheres too.

THE LINEUP

The lineup for the all-dayer is huge and it's all for free. Headlined by We are the Physics, they math pop band are joined by the following:

Wot Gorilla

Flamingods

Hold your horse is

Olympians

Playlounge

Joey Fourr

Our Lost Infantry

Pirate video company

Stephen from Tellison

If you are not convinced already by the cracking lineup, come sign up to the 7Bit party on facebook.

New Branding, New Era

There has been a rumbling around 7Bit towers recently; The rumbling that something big was coming, something that was going to change how 7Bit looks,works and appeals to our audience.

We have had branding and a name that feels more at home in the gaming scene than in the music/lifestyle medium but we have been working on changing this for the past 4 months with the results finally being announced over the weekend.

So why the logo design?

I have taken the explanation given to us directly by our designer

The identity primarily uses the 7 icon but where necessary the type can be paired with the logo.

The use of the word ‘seven’ rather than the number is suggested to add a more even feel to the type. I feel it also works better for the brand giving an emphasis on the written word rather than a mathematical symbol and therefore being more about written media.

It is an exciting time for 7Bit, and the above logo is an example of a sub brand, as we do intend to not stay with just music permanently but that's a long way away. :D

We hope you like logo and to announce it we made this sick ass video.

The Importance of Writers

Over the past week or so, I have been creating a team page for the writers, artists, photographers and everyone who does something for 7Bit. It brought to my attention the grand scale and the talent of everyone I currently work with or used to work with in such a way that it made me write this blog post.

Without a team, it's hard to even comprehend where you are going to start out when it comes to planning out one's aim with a business let alone a website. 7Bit has always been run professionally, but with professionalism doesn't come the need to sacrifice all morals and the urge to have compassion for who you work with. I make it known that each individual who writers for 7Bit gets treated like a member of the family because at the end of the day, everyone you employ, everyone who helps out becomes a muscle in the beating heart of your business. It's also the reason why that all applicants, whatever their role, must fit a specific personality type to even fit into the puzzle that is 7Bit.

Family

The idea of family is very important to me; Treating others how you wish yourself to be treated. It's why we hold events for all of our staff every couple of months. It's way to show that we appreciate what they do for us as it's all done for the love of music and for the chance to showcase their ability to the world. Be it there may be potholes along the way ( deadlines potholes ) but that's life isn't it. I'm proud that we have such a small turnover of staff and that after being live for nearly two years, 7Bit has a team that is close knit.

Your staff are the most important part of your business; Keep your staff happy then who knows what the future might bring.

Looking forward to 2013

Happy New Year to everyone first of all. Over the past few months, 7BitTowers has been a place full of excitement and drive due to the buzz that we are attempting to create in 2013. All the gears have been churning and all the midnight oil has been burnt whilst we have been trying to subjugate the best of our imaginations.

7BitArcade has been around for over 3 years now in various forms, so after years of chameleon like behaviour, it is finally time to settle and begin our ascendancy as one of the top music magazine sites. Music is a tough market to crack as there are millions of other reputable sites out that deserve attention but over the next 12 months, we believe that 7Bit will become a service that you will not be able to do without.

Top of our lists are more events that you the lovely public can come too, so expect gig promotion to top our agenda as well as being more accessible in a local way. Teams of reviewers are being formed in each of the major cities in the UK so we can cover as many gigs as possible whilst providing a face to the site that is physical and not just an email.

Festivals

We aim to be at as many festivals next year as possible with our 7Bit flag, so if you see it whilst trooping around a muddy campsite, feel free to come on other and instigate conversation. If you do so, it will be highly likely that we will attempt to ply you with alcohol; It’s just the way we are. As well as a superb community atmosphere, we will be bringing our superb festival coverage to the countryside as we are pleased to announce that we have a video team worthy of bringing down Spielberg, Bay and Anderson. Wes Anderson, not that turdwrangler who makes the resident evil movies. Expect some fantastic documentaries from us this year as we pry into the music industry and give bands the sort of coverage that you would expect from the top level sites.

Hands across the world

Content is not all we are pursuing next year; We intend to reach out to those blogs and sites like us as 2013 is the year of the community here. Our aim is to harness the technology that 2013 will become famous for and use it make 7Bit the best music service across all internet space; We already have a huge community on the new myspace. YOLO.

Change is good. Change can be the difference between going under or finally succeeding. With 2013, 7Bit believes that a small amount of change and a lot of ideas will do us good. As with most things, we can’t give too much away at the moment, but the snippets I have mentioned above are only a small part of the community we are creating. It will be an adventure but sadly, it won’t be with Finn & Jake.

zac-gorman

Thanks, Mom!

shialabeowulf

99 Life Hacks to make your life easier!

mintfish

putting this shit under a readmore holy fuck

shialabeowulf:

tinycartridge

Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation looks so much like my thing. At a glance, it doesn’t seem too different from the other Assassin’s Creed games that weren’t my thing, but:

This shiz is portable (PS Vita)

I really like that Ubisoft went with a non-traditional heroine, Aveline de Grandpré, the daughter of a French merchant and an African placée bride

These GIFs (resized from these awesome images) come from the developer diary video Ubisoft put out today.

Preorder: Assassin's Creed 3: LIberation See also: More Assassin's Creed 3 posts

Jake Green becomes News Editor

News. It isn't what it used to be. No longer do we have men in well maintained velvet suits reading our news to us. No sir. News is an ever changing beast, which is why we have decided to take a step in the Ron Burgandy direction and bring on a whole news team that will be headed up by our current News Editor, Jake Green.

Jake has been with us for a few months now and is to blame/to thank for our recent growth as a news site. It was always something that as an Editor, I was cautious to enter into as news can either dethrone or crown you as a website. So the route in is one carefully trooden with only news stories that we believe will have any impact for us being published. This may not always work in our favour, but with 7Bit, i've always believed that we should give what the readers want, not manufactured press releases.

News is dull right. Too much anger too much hate. And that's just constantly reporting on The Libertines. At 7Bit, we will make sure that our news is entertaining and not a waste of your time. Hopefully, each news piece will have either a free music item for download of a special perk. What can I say, we like doing things differently.

I'm very happy to have Jake on board and whilst he recruits his team, be comforted by the fact that he is growing his moustache and ironing his suit. The news team cometh.

Having good merchandise. How important is it.

Seeing your brand out in the wild is a fantastic feeling. Friends of mine started a T-Shirt company recently and the sight of seeing one of their designs being worn by the consumer was always enough to give that well deserved satisfaction. For most typical consumer media websites, the idea of merchandise usually goes down one of two avenues during the brainstorming process.

OBVIOUS BRANDING OR SUBTLE DESIGN

It's a toss up between obvious branding ( GAP, Jack Wills, Abercrombie & Fitch ) on your product or a more subtle approach (Insert Coin, Nap Time) where the design does the speaking. The latter approach means that your design has to stick to a branding that appeals to the consumer on more than just a " look at me, this is fucking abercrombie" level.

SO WHAT WAY ARE WE GOING?

The 7BitArcade art team are ridiculously talented at being outlandishly creative whilst satisfying my primal need to keep everything within brand. For the merchandise, I decided it was time for a change. Instead of stating, 'I want this here, and that there' an open idea was the plan. No deadlines, no creative input from me and no hints as to what I thought the merchandise branding should look like. By doing this, it has allowed our art team to really produce an idea that is both beautiful, and sticks to a brand. It is also something that our readers, writers will want to wear, carry and use.

WHAT IS IT THEN...STOP TEASING

Well we can't actually say yet, as it's still in the post design stage, but it will be shown soon for your pleasure.

anorakdigital-blog

MySpace is lookin’ fresh these days!

I think this is the overhaul MySpace has been waiting for. Seriously. Well done to the team over at the forgotten king of social networks. The new look site has a modern and fluid style that aggregates music and social together as one. We especially love the event playlists with photo album - genius. All that is left now is to keep hold of those artists. We’ll certainly be in support!

7bitarcade

With Myspace being relaunched this week, the importance of the platform for the music industry seems to be significant again with the site basing itself around the sharing of music. Also, even though only touched on slightly, the connections between artist and fan seem to be closer than ever.

What we learned at Southsea

For those of you who don't know, we decided this year that, being one of our favorite festivals of last year, we'd do something a bit special for this years festival, blowing our budget out slightly and trying to run a good fun competition, to try and get people involved as well as to get us talking to more festival goers and get a wider picture of what the festival means to the locals of Southsea, and festival regulars alike. We decided to run with a treasure hunt, giving out a large number of releases from bands at the festival. First of all, a huge thanks to every band, performer, label, promoter, and everyone else, who gave us cds, merch and vinyl to give away at the festival - we appreciate budgets are tight, and we hope that even though the competition wasn't a success the music will still end up in the hands of potential new fans.

The night before Southsea, with a few kilograms of Haribo and a stack of fliers, and two bags full of goodies, we sat, preparing ourselves for the festival, attaching Haribo to fliers which had a link to join the treasure hunt. There were more of us than usual covering the festival, Lindsay, Lauren, Antony and myself, meaning that as well as having four of us working on reviews, we had two people giving out music and two people covering the venues in fliers (and credit where due, venues were very nice about this). We thought people would be interested in free music; I know I'd be interested in free music, but we learned quite early that running this competition wasn't the success we were hoping for.

We realised quite early on that people weren't coming along to claim prizes when advertised, which was a shame, as the things being given out were great, and a lot of them I would love to have won at a festival. We took an approach that involved us picking people at random and offering people to items from a lucky dip bag. This had varying success. Early on, in the cafes it was easy to do, people were friendly and interested, and seemed happy with what they won. Later on, in the venues, we were actually given looks of disgust, and on a few occasions harsh responses for it. Personally I can't understand this, and yeah, maybe that ruined the festival for me. I think by treating it as work, and trying to do something that I hoped would get people involved it detracted from the festival vibe and I found myself picking up on the nuisances elsewhere that maybe I wouldn't have noticed, like how people talked over everything everywhere, and that bands with dynamics were ruined by the Edge Of The Wedge's lack of soundproofing leaking sound into the venue, drowning out the musicians.

The music, in retrospect - now that I've had a chance to think the festival over, was the saving feature of Southsea, and the organisers did a great job of putting on a huge range of bands, putting sensible lineups on each stage (generally genres wouldn't fluctuate massively over one stage, which is good). The sound engineers did a great job in most of the stages too, the social club in particularly was amazing, Doctrines sounded identical to the way their EP was recorded, the mixing was top class. The highlight for myself had to be Tellison. I'm sure anyone who was there will understand this choice, they destroyed the Edge Of The Wedge and themselves in the process. Brilliant stuff.

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