Yesterday, musicians, celebrities and industry professionals celebrated digital music at Camden’s legendary Roundhouse, where the winners of the BT Digital Music Awards 2008 were announced.
Kylie took home two awards - ‘Best Pop Artist’ and ‘Best Innovation’ for the site Kylie Konnect (kyliekonnect.com) where fans can create their very own profile on the site dedicated to the pop princess.
Coldplay walked away with Best Rock/Indie Artist and Best Official Music Website for Coldplay.com. This year has seen the band launch single ‘Violet Hill’ on their own website as a free download for six hours on the day of launch.
Digital pioneers Radiohead fought off strong competition from Leona Lewis, Bloc Party, Coldplay and Kylie to be crowned ‘Artist of the Year’. In October 2007, Radiohead hit the headlines after fans were invited to decide how much they wanted to pay for the band’s new album in a ‘pay what you like’ download experiment.
Hadouken! scooped Best Electronic Artist/DJ, with Wiley taking Best Urban Artist after impressing the judges with the digital promotion for his single ‘Wearing my Rolex’.
Other winners on the night included The Zutons for ‘Best Video Podcast’, Vampire Weekend for ‘Best Breakthrough Artist’, Hospital Records’ London Elektricity for ‘Best Audio Podcast’ for another year running and The Camden Crawl 2008 for Best Mobile Campaign – during the Crawl, fans were updated with live text recommendations of venues to visit through the night.
A blog site created by Oasis fan Louise Davies – http://stopcryingyourheartoutnews.blogspot.com – took Best Music Blog. The site features comedy ‘spoof videos’ of actor Stevie Riks playing the two Gallagher brothers. The award was one of three People’s Choice categories - voted for solely by fans.
Best Music Hardware was awarded to the Gibson ‘robot’ guitar with Peter Gabriel’s free and legal download service We7 taking Best Digital Service.
There were 20 awards presented on the night, 13 of which were voted for by music fans via www.bt.com/dma and seven by a panel of experts.
Sugababes, British Sea Power, Ida Maria, Fightstar, Iglu and the HartlySam Beeton and Beardyman entertained the crowd with performances on the night.
Music fans that weren’t lucky enough to bag a ticket to the exclusive event can catch all of the action in a special awards show presented by Fearne Cotton and Rufus Hound on ITV2 on Saturday 4th October at 23.15.
With over 13million broadband lines in the UK, there has never been a better time to recognise digital music - with over 95% of all single sold now digital, digital sales amassing £124.4m in 2007 and the fact there are well over 5m different tracks available to stream, rent or buy on the Internet.
The BT Digital Music Awards 2008, full list of winners:
Best Pop Artist - Kylie Minogue
Best Rock/Indie Artist - Coldplay
Best Urban Artist - Wiley
Best Electronic Artist or DJ - Hadouken!
Best Audio Podcast - Hospital Records podcast
Best Video Podcast - The Zutons podcast
Best Radio Station - Planet Rock
Best Music Store - iTunes
Best Music Magazine - NME.com
Best Music Community - Download Festival Community
Best Artist Promotion - Dylan Messenger - Bob Dylan album promotion Best Digital Service - We7 Best Mobile Campaign - Red Stripe Camden Crawl 2008 Breakthrough Artist of the Year - Vampire Weekend
Artist of the Year - Radiohead
Best Innovation - Kylie Konnect
Best Music Hardware - Gibson ‘robot' guitar
Best Music Blog - StopCryingYourHeartOutnews.blogspot.com
Best Unofficial Music Site - AvrilBandAids.com
Best Official Music Site - Coldplay.com
