No it’s not an April Fools Day joke as that was yesterday in Australia. In the Moose inbox this morning was a nice note from Mark Poston, Country Chairman of EMI Records Australasia in which he notes – “At EMI Music Australia we’ve taken the plunge in what is a global first for a major label, and started our own blog. It’s brand new and we’re just starting to point it out to a few people who we thought might be interested in knowing about it early. As far as major labels go, EMI Australia has a strong reputation for developing artist careers and that commitment means listening to the people who want to hear their artists’ music.
I applaud Mark for taking this step and providing the necessary transparency into his particular corner of the record company world and for providing two way communication between his company and fans of their artists. He has his work cut out for him though. The first step he has to understand about social media, of which company blogs are a large part, is that he can not just post about EMI artists on his blog. Blog etiquette requires that he covers new and interesting music that he discovers and I’m not so sure how comfortable that he will be covering his competition’s acts..
Still, as he settles in to his new world of 24/7 blogging [the blogs never sleep, Mark] I’m sure he’ll have fun.
All in all though I am supportive as it should not have taken this long for a major label to get to this point. Here’s what the blog offers:
• fans and artists can connect directly with our A&R and marketing team: via this link
• an A&R drop box allows fans to communicate their tips directly to the A&R team
• internally driven, original content: Animal Collective
• integration with Twitter, Creative Commons images, SoundCloud and Australian bloggers like Shoot The Player