Meet the final three bands in this year’s One Last Dream with Guitar Hero Greatest Hits…

Proteen

They gigged their way around South Wales in the early 80’s and hadn’t seen eachother for over 20 years until a private detectvice found everyone and put the band back together.

Jeep

They claim that Shane MacGowan mentions them in his autobiography.  Having seen them play in a pub in West Dryaton, Shane is said to have claimed that they influenced the sound of The Pogues.  They broke up in 1984.

The Original Sinners

Praise from Kerrang Magazine and Metal Hammer was not enough to keep these guys going and they never quite made it.  Back together to ‘live the rock’n'roll lifestyle, have a good time and meet girls.’

Voting begins on Thursday and we’ll have a winning band by Friday.  They’ll be on the bill at Hard Rock Calling having One Last Dream come true.

Every Thursday at 5.30pm Absolute Radio opens the hallowed boardroom doors at One Golden Square for an Open Playlist Meeting to which all are invited.

To find our more about how to attend click here.

DJ Ben Jones hosts the meeting and picks 2 VIP listeners to attend each week, alongside a couple of clients and new members of staff to create a panel of 6 music fans.

The simple, but time-honoured, tradition of ‘HIT, MISS or MAYBE’ is then used to assess a selection of 5 tracks which we are considering, or have just added, to the Absolute Radio pool of new songs.

Here are the results of the most recent Open Playlist Meeting.

STARSAILOR – ALL THE PLANS – 5 hits, 1 maybe
THE RUMBLE STRIPS – NOT THE ONLY PERSON – 4 hits, 2 maybe
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – MY LUCKY DAY – 4 hits, 1 maybe, 1 miss
THE SCRIPT – BEFORE THE WORST – 4 maybe, 2 miss
BAT FOR LASHES – PEARL’S DREAM – 3 miss, 3 maybe

Yesterday we uploaded the sponsorship idents that we’ll be using for the ITV2 coverage of the Isle of Wight Festival this weekend.

The purpose of these idents is to promote all of the live events we’re going to this summer. We recently conducted some listener research to find out which festivals and concerts our listeners are most keen to this summer.

23% of you are going to V Festival, 16% are seeing U2 and 12% are going to see (or have seen) Oasis. And nearly half of you are going to at least one other live event over the summer.

But that leaves a lot of people who aren’t going to anything. We also asked listeners what events they’d like to win tickets for.

54% mentioned V Festival, and 38% the Isle of Wight Festival, whilst U2, Coldplay and Hard Rock Calling were also very popular.

The good news is that we’re giving away tickets to all of these over The Summer of Live on Absolute Radio on air and online.

The new playlist is out now.

New entries:

U2 – I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (release date TBC)
This is likely to be the next single from U2’s latest album ‘No Line On The Horizon’

Green Day – 21 Guns (13th July)
2nd single from Green Day’s 8th studio album ‘21st Century Breakdown’

Linkin Park – New Divide (15th June)
Theme song from the new Transformers movie which opens at cinemas on June the 19th.
Linkin Park have sold more than 45 million records worldwide.

Yeah You’s – 15 Minutes (15th June)
Debut single from London duo who count Queen among their influences

Dave Matthews Band – Funny The Way It Is (29th June)
Dave Matthews and his band play Hard Rock Calling in London’s Hyde Park on Sunday the 28th of June

The Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound (29th June)
New band from New Jersey, who play on the same bill as Bruce Springsteen at Hard Rock Calling, Sunday 28th June

Paloma Faith – Stone Cold Sober (15th June)
Debut single from one-time actress and burlesque singer whose influences include Billie Holiday and Etta James.

–

Geoff’s Hometime Track of the Week:

Florence And The Machine – Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) (22nd June)
Florence And The Machine are a new band from South London who won the “Critic’s Choice” Award at this year’s Brit Awards. This single is the follow-up to Geoff Lloyd’s Record of The Week ‘Dog Day Are Over’ and is from Florence’s debut album ‘Lungs’, out 6th of July.

To communicate our involvement at all of the live events this summer, we secured the sponsorship of ITV’s Isle of Wight coverage. Albion were briefed; meetings were held. We have now come out with a selection of 9 different ident executions which will precede all of their footage at this coming festival.

One of the main insights which moulded the creative idea was based in our ident audience, who would predominantly consist of people reluctantly missing the festival due to domestic commitments. As a station, we couldn’t be more accommodating for these reluctant adults. We promise to provide our listeners with free live music every day this summer, and the Isle of Wight is the first live event we are covering. Therefore, for those missing out on the mud, sweat and delirium which accompany the best of festivals, we ensure they can still be part of the euphoria.

At Absolute Radio, we are bringing the live music to everyone. And this commitment is resolutely adhered to across all our platforms. Our idents therefore showcase the harmony that we facilitate between live music and domesticity. Each execution is visually focused on a mundane domestic task. This is complemented by audio simulating the set up of a live set. The result is a set of simple, crisp, intelligent idents. I hope you agree.

As well as the idents preceding ITV’s footage, we are also featuring some of the creative up on the festival screens. Whilst fighting for a drink at the bar, waiting for the next band to set up, you might notice the image of a key entering a door:

A teabag being dunked in to a mug:

Or toast being buttered:

All accompanied by the sound of guitar reverb or mic feedback. Indeed these are our ads, and they convey our commitment to live music, no matter where you are.

We welcome your feedback.

The new playlist is out today.

It sees new entries from Bruce Springsteen, Jack Penate, Fleet Foxes, The Script and Starsailor.

Geoff’s Hometime Fresh Track of the Week is Angela by Jarvis Cocker.

This forthcoming London-based app, Tube Exits, is the latest journey planner promising to shave off a record 10 minutes from your trip to work. Sceptical? The free ‘lite’ version will allow you to sample the app from the 12 busiest underground stations. You will also notice Absolute Radio banners are in there. Click on them, and you will swiftly be directed to our homepage and enticed to download the Absolute Radio app. Both are essential.

As of Tuesday, you will be given the opportunity to download the full app for the price of a zone 1 single fare. I am told this app is essential for your survival in the big smoke. For a mere £1.79 you can expect to beat the commuters to the front line. Whether you are travelling to any of the 9 zones, British Rail, or DLR, it will clearly instruct on which cabin to alight at, change (if necessary), and then exit.

Once you have saved the app firmly in your iPhone or iPod touch, you can use both over and underground. Customise the app by saving your favourite journeys, as well as amending the tube map to suit your needs. The dedicated creator, Lance Stewart, spent an entire week visiting each of the 268 stations to work out the fastest exits. So far, Londoners are already relying on this indispensable route planner; Lives have been enhanced “using Tube Exits, I saved vital minutes and got to my interview just in time. Thanks Tube Exits!”

Download this Tuesday.

As the new Digital Marketing Manager at Absolute Radio, it seems like a good time to introduce myself – especially as it appears I have the dubious honour of being the most followed radio person on Twitter who has never appeared on air!

Besides almost 10 years working as an online journalist and marketing manager, I’m also a blogger, with two sites covering marketing (www.thewayoftheweb.net) and microblogging sites (www.140char.com) like Twitter. I’m a motorcyclist, a football fan, a failed guitarist (my ambitions outweighed my talent), and a music obsessive. And I’m just old enough to have bought my first music on vinyl (for the record, it was the soundtrack to The Return of the Jedi on LP –s o I was always destined to be a geek).

My job is to ensure that you can always find the most relevant audio content. And that’s whether you’re visiting the website, using the iAmp iphone application, listening on your mobile phone, using a search engine, or a social networking site like Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube.

And if you fancy boosting me up the list of radio people on Twitter, you can find me here.

Looking back, upon hearing those words perhaps we should have known we were in for a strange night.

At 7:45 last night Hometime listener Alison had never heard of Florence and the Machine. By 10:45 she was rubbing shoulders with Florence Welch of the afore-mentioned band.

Geoff, Gareth and myself were ‘lucky’ enough to spend the evening in the company of Alison after she won a competition on last night’s show to Florence’s gig at the Bloomsbury Ballroom.

Much like our friends at the Telegraph, I won’t give you all the information just yet: the story of the night’s events will be slowly drip-fed to you over the next few days in words and pictures.

Listen to Geoff Lloyd’s Hometime Show tonight from 5, where I’m sure Mr Lloyd will have plenty to share on what turned out to be an eventful night.

You can listen to the audio of Alison on Hometime here:

Nelson: Hometime Producer.

P.S. Florence really is going to save the world.

The latest playlist is now available.

There’s a new entry from Florence and the Machine, while Geoff’s Hometime Record of the Week is I Just Want To Spend Some Time With You by Howard Eliott Payne.

A new book was published last week - Radio Head - by John Osborne. No, not our John Osborne. Another one.

The book is one person’s experiences listening to lots of different radio stations to help him through his mundane data entry job. And chapter one is about us! Well in our old Virgin Radio guise, but that still means Christian and Geoff, Neil and Russ (the book was actually written early last year).

Anyway, you can listen to it yourself this week over on Radio 4 where it’s the Book of the Week. Yesterday’s episode was the one that featured us, and Christian in particular. So why not have a listen? (BBC iPlayer link live until next Monday).

Why do like Twitter? Is it because it has 32 Million Global Visitors?

What can we learn from Twitters success?
• Conversations – People based utility rather just website or software
• Less is more – micro blogging suits us, who has time to write long blog posts
• Control & Convienence – available across all platforms, mobile & free
• Gossip – Windows into other people’s lives

From Techcrunch:

How quickly they grow. Remember when Twitter was just a little pipsqueek, with less than 10 million monthly unique visitors to its site worldwide? That was back in February, 2009. Fast-forward to April, and Twitter’s U.S. visitors alone reached 17 million. Now comScore has released its worldwide numbers and it estimates Twitter’s global unique visitors in April, 2009 was a whopping 32 million, up from 19 million in March, 2009.
To put that in growth into perspective, Twitter has just passed Digg (23 million), LinkedIn (16 million), and the NYTimes.com (17.5 million) in monthly unique visitors, as counted by comScore. And comScore only measures the number of people who visit Twitter’s Website, not the millions more who send and read tweets via their phones, desktop apps, or other Websites. Twitter.com is also now bigger than Bebo and Freindster, for what it is worth. Who will it pass next?

Read more here.

At the end of last week, the Digital Radio Development Bureau published its latest regular update on the state of DAB digital radio in the UK.

Their headline figure, taken from the Q1 2009 RAJAR release, is that 32.1% of adults now live in a DAB household - very nearly a third. This is up 17% year on year.

RAJAR also tells us that digital radio now accounts for 20% of all radio listening - with the DAB share being 12.7%, DTV 3.4% and the internet 2.2% (the difference is listening where the platform wasn’t recorded).

Sales data from GFK reveals that cumulatively 9 million DAB radio have been sold, with 2.1 million being sold in the last year.

Here are a few more of the DRDB’s slides:

The Digital Media team at Absolute Radio has been working on some site-wide improvements and new features over the last few months, designed to make it easier to navigate around absoluteradio.co.uk, and easier to find the great content we have on the website like live sessions and competitions. We also wanted to put our VIP online community more at the heart of the website.

Some of the improvements were launched in Beta last week, and on Monday we launched two more areas for VIPs and other interested parties to take a look at, and provide feedback through our new live feedback system which forms part of the beta tour.

Feedback on the work so far has been 92% positive, but we aim to implement further tweaks and improvements based on the feedback, ahead of the full launch next week.

I’d like to thank those who have taken the time so far to provide constructive feedback. It’s very useful to us, particularly on projects that are designed to make key user interface improvements.

As I mentioned, this week we launched two further additions to our beta area, and these are particularly exciting ones I think. Video is increasingly an important part of Absolute Radio’s output, and the latest beta launch showcases this content much better, while making it easier to discover, share and comment on the thousands of video and on-demand audio clips we have available on the website, for free.

So, if you have a spare ten minutes and would like to take a look at what we have been working on, visit our beta area and let us know what you think of the improvements. We have a whole shopping list of things we want to do to the site, so this is just the start.

http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/beta

Anthony

The new playlist is out today. It sees new entries from The Enemy and White Lies.

The Hometime Fresh Track of the Week with Ben Jones this week, is Back of the Van by Ladyhawke who played a great session here last week.