You think you've got choices? The Musicbiz would rather you didn't

FIFA may be dodgy, but try looking at the hype industry

There's a fantastic, possibly apocryphal, story of how one record company rep made quite sure that only his company's stuff was played at US R'n'B radio in the 50s. This was in the days of 78s. The rep simply, accidentally on purpose, cracked all the other records in the library, leaving them unplayable. Oops, sorry 'bout that. 

The Music business has a long and unsavoury history of dodgy deals. Back in the 30s, song pluggers would pitch songs for their publishing company bosses, first when selling sheet music in music shops, and later pitching material to record companies and band leaders. Even Gerschwin, when he wasn't banging out hits, worked as a song plugger. Such territory is ripe for manipulation. And before radio killed jukeboxes, there was intense competition to place songs on the right machines.    

You may ask what that ancient history have to do either with today's relentlessly, um, transparent music industry, or even music on our patch? Well... quite a lot. 

The Redbeards From Texas started a joke. It very nearly got serious.

A tale of fake beards, real success, and pencil pushing bureaucrats.

A long time ago, a South Birmingham boozer, the Selly Park Tavern, was hosting a radio gathering: lots of people from West Midlands stations, many no longer in existence. 

Onstage: The Redbeards From Texas. A seriously fun band that, later, came this close to breaking though; a whim that almost, almost made it. We’ll get to that. But that night, in front of the assembled might of Midlands radio, they were playing for laughs. They pulled people up onstage to sing with them. 

That was fun... until they fingered me. Ooops. I didn’t know the words to Born In The USA, so I bawled the chorus a couple of times, and retreated in confusion. Oh, the humiliation, and all in front of a roomful of my peers. Bastards. 

If you google ‘Redbeards From Texas’ now, thirty years after their glory days, you’ll find a surprising amount of material – videos, a discography and reminiscences. This was a band that made a mark. Craig Fenney (aka Bud Weiser), has a ton of stories after the jump.

West Midlands Acts on Video - who's watching?

YouTube views for local acts totted up, ranked and compared with the February numbers. There's some surprises...

Who the hell are are these guys? Read on...

Six months ago, just out of curiosity, I researched local acts on video, ranking by most-viewed. It was an interesting exercise, showing how different genres pull in some terrific figures. Six months on, here's a slightly refined repeat exercise. 

No such chart is perfect. With apologies to those artists I missed out on six months ago, I've cast the net wider, although this makes ranking some stuff difficult - do Rap Battles count? I've excluded these - but they might make an interesting sub-chart in their own right. I've also charted the increase in views over the past six months, which gives a rough indication of how an act may be progressing. In one case this has led to a spectacular and probably unrepeatable increase in viewing numbers. The new chart is after the jump.

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.