Artist demos no longer accepted on physical formats as SONY BMG embraces new digital blogging platforms to find new talent.

SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK has announced that from April 2nd 2007 it will no longer accept demos from new artists on physical formats such as CDs for consideration by the company's Columbia Records or RCA Records labels. Instead a polite message will be sent back asking musicians to sign up to one of two new websites, which will allow them to post music, photos, videos and links digitally and become part of a community that will include both new artists and SonyBMG executives.

SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK is launching the two new groundbreaking online initiatives, www.columbiademos.co.uk and www.rcademos.co.uk, in conjunction with one of the world's best known, accomplished and experienced social media and blogging service providers Six Apart and their blogging platform Vox.com. An artist simply sets up their own weblog on Vox.com after entering through either the www.columbiademos.co.uk or www.rcademos.co.uk URLs and automatically becomes a member of the RCA or Columbia label's online A&R; group or 'virtual neighbourhood'.

Participation is free and users can utilise a number of easy-to-use blogging tools to upload their own audio, video and image content. The company anticipate that users who actively blog and start to receive positive comments and ratings from other users will quickly come to the attention of their A&R; departments who are also being encouraged to start their own blogs on the sites.

It is important to note that any artist who decides to blog on either www.columbiademos.co.uk or www.rcademos.co.uk is in no way committed to working with or signing to SONY BMG Music Entertainment UK. The major is launching the venture simply as a new tool for bands to use.

Chairman & CEO, SONY BMG Music Entertainment, UK & Ireland, Ged Doherty is a passionate advocate of the new initiative and is among the first people to have become a regular blogger on the sites at gedblog.vox.com. He said, "Blogging is clearly one of the major trends in music, media and entertainment. 100,000 new blogs go online each day at the moment and the blogosphere is doubling every 230 days so it makes complete sense for the major labels to use the process in a creative way to encourage, discover and communicate with new artists. Hopefully this will go some way towards breaking down the barriers between new artists and music companies and make for more open, transparent dialogues between the two of us. New talent remains the core commitment for SONY BMG and we want to offer that talent innovative and efficient ways of presenting themselves and their music to us. The A&R; Blogs are a great way of doing that. They offer the band a great platform to show themselves off to best advantage to anyone who might be interested in taking them on and furthering their career."

Other active SONY BMG users on the new blogging sites already include Mike Smith, Managing Director of Columbia Records and Craig Logan, Managing Director of RCA Records along with the entire A&R; teams at both labels.

Andrew Anker Executive Vice President, Six Apart, the developers of the Vox.com blogging platform, said, "By diving into social media and embracing the concept of blogging in such a pioneering way, Sony BMG UK is clearly emerging as one of the most innovative and forward thinking organizations in the music industry, globally. We are very excited and proud to be partnering with Ged Doherty and his team on this project, and we look forward to delivering a cutting-edge environment for a newly vibrant, interactive and engaging presentation of audio and visual content".

You can view video interviews with Ged, Mike and Craig on the subject here.