Band brand. Perez Hilton, music tour director Jamie King and American Idol creator Simon Fuller have joined forces to form ‘The Boy Band for the Next Generation’.

By Mark Terry. Artist app. The Recording Academy and TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles have come up with an online app to support to the We’re All Fans ad campaign for the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards slated for 31st January.
The FanBuzz Visualizer combs the Net for conversations and comments and of featured Grammy-nominated and winning artists. The chatter is then tabulated to recognize the artists who have invested the most time connecting with their fans through social networks.

By Maria Stadtmueller. Pantene playlist. Grey New York invited delegates to the MIDEM conference to submit original songs for possible use in the 2010 P&G Pantene ad campaign and in the brand’s corporate comms, including press events and sponsorship.

The ad agency and P&G is evaluating submissions and will create a ‘Top 20 Playlist’ which will be presented at an open listening session on 26^th January in Cannes.  The Pantene session is one of four offered at MIDEM, where they are seen as onsite auditions for major video games, films and TV shows, as well as advertising.

By Hugh Jordan. Band benefit. Finding the right track for an ad is rather like dating. You might meet your perfect partner first go, hit it off and live happily ever after. But the chances are, you won’t. At least, not without a little help.

Record-Play is in the business of helping marketers and bands find the perfect match. For brands, there is a music consultancy service and over 3,000 fully licensed tracks in Record-Play’s online Music Hub. For bands there is the Artist Development Program… plus the chance of fame and fortune, of course.

Top video. Vevo was the most visited online destination in the entertainment/music category in the US last month, racking up close to 36 million unique visitors, according to comScore. And that’s a pretty good performance considering that the new premium music video service  – created by Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Abu Dhabi Media Company – only launched on 8^th December.

By Maria Stadtmueller. Fab Four. US consumers made more than 10.4 billion music purchases in the last decade, according to Nielsen Soundscan. The Beatles notched up the top-selling album of the period with Beatles 1, which pulled in 11.6 million unit sales, ahead of N’Sync’s No Strings Attached (11.1 million) and Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me (10.6 million).

By Mark Terry. Top shop. HMV’s move into pop-up shops has done a good job in reviving the brand, according to retail solutions outfit Green Room Retail. The entertainment retailer opened 10 temporary stores in towns across the UK over the Christmas and reported earlier this month that the short-form formats had helped lift sales.

By Steve Mullins. Skin game. E4, the youth-oriented digital TV channel of UK broadcaster Channel 4 has joined forces with digital distribution outfit Artists Without A Label to get unsigned artists to submit tracks to appear in its teen series Skins. All they have to do is upload their songs to a Skins/AWAL portal where the two partners will listen in, blog about the good ones, and put their favourites in the show.

By Maria Stadtmueller. WeAreAll… music. The Recording Academy and TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles have launched the WeAreAllFans campaign with a dedicated website featuring portraits of artists to promo the upcoming 52nd Grammy Awards.

The destination’s pix comprise real-time, fan-generated YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook postings, with content garnered from the social media platforms used to refresh the living portrait of each artist on the website.