West Midlands video viewing numbers

Some West Midlands artists are racking up viewing figures numbers that outstrip viewing figures for established names. Time to take a closer look...

This time last year, I had a stab at measuring airplay for local bands. It was fun but inconclusive. That said, more bands and acts are scoring national airplay this year, but the local airplay picture remains pretty drab. So I've yet to go back into that particular data mine - but I plan to. 

This year, it's been hard to ignore YouTube numbers for some of the acts I've featured on this blog. For example, both George Barnett and Electric Swing Circus have numbers that put some mainstream artists to shame.

So I did a bit more digging: some rough and ready research to try to get a picture of which local West Midlands acts are doing well on YouTube (and Vimeo - although the Vimeo numbers are in the main dwarfed by the YouTube scores). It's produced quite an interesting chart... but it's also something of a statistical minefield. Details, names, rankings, numbers, the all-important criteria and more after the jump.

Everybody Wants To Be a Cat: Electric Swing Circus spell it out

Electric Swing Circus: Big Fun, major YouTube numbers, sellout club nights, a full gig sheet, and now their first festival. All this in 18 months. How?  

With a custom Electro Swing mix from the C@ In The H@ included in this post

Two videos to announce their existence, which in a year have racked up well over 200,000 YouTube views between them; a string of Electro Swing club nights leading up to their first festival; and a snazzy website. 

Then there’s successful crowd-funding to build up funds towards their first album, a pretty unique musical proposition in their hometown, and on top of that, a whole big chunk of their appeal flowing from live showmanship, snappy good-time tunes, and not a little onstage showboating. It’s looking good.

Guitarist Tom Hyland brings a lot of the onstage razzmatazz; he looks the part. Lots of corkscrew hair, extravagant headwear, and plenty of effervescent stage moves. It works. Offstage, he’s just as effervescent, but affably grounded with it. And for all the fizz and affability, there's sound strategic thinking behind the approach.

Don't You Point That Thing At Me Pal! #3: Ian Dunn talks music photography

Erica Knockalls, Wonderstuff, 2012

In the third of this blog's snappers stories, Ian Dunn talks about the ins and outs of kit, his love of music, moshpit etiquette, favourite venues and more.

Ian Dunn runs Principle Photography. He's one of maybe half a dozen local snappers you'll see regularly hoovering up images at venues around the Midlands and beyond. And like many of his peers, he has a passion for music and the scene that supports it, as you'll see if you read down the page.

But you may not see him at all. Ian works very unobtrusively. Gets in, gets the shots, gets out. He's a stickler for that definite and precise code of collaboration that he and others observe as they go about their business.

Even if you haven't seen him at work, you'll most likely have seen the results of his work. If you're at all interested in local music, his site is worth a visit.

We met up for this blog piece a few weeks back. And, as you'd expect from a rock snapper, we kicked off talking about... Opera.