An new project entitled, "Be The Band," has been launched this year. The project hopes to attract students from a range of disciplines from musicians to animators and create an online virtual band with a single to be released through napster.co.uk and HMV digital. Money will be raised for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy through the online sales of the single with a target of £1 million.
The project particularly wishes to showcase the new talent in the animation field and is keen to attract them to the project with the hopes that the finished animated music video is to be featured across a wide variety of digital platforms including television and the Internet.
The project, which is the result of a collaboration between thestudentzone.com and studentcribs.co.uk, hopes to make web history by handing over the decision-making process to all those registered with the project, effectively making everyone involved part of the band management. Everything from the style of music to the final band members and song will be decided through an online voting and audition process on the project website www.betheband.co.uk.
The project founder Emma Reilly, of studentcribs.co.uk and Launchpad Media, said, "We could never have pulled off a project like this 10 years ago. The Internet has truly opened the doors to creative expression in a community environment. We wanted to take advantage of this and bring a highly unique event to the Internet that would allow every day people to help raise money for such a great cause."
Mike Harding, of Thestudentzone.com & MTI Llc., who have been instrumental in the development of the project, also sees the huge task of creating a web band highly exciting.
"The most exciting part of this project for me is that it could really turn the idea of a 'band' on its head. It could become the way bands are formed in the future as online communities become more and more popular. Think 'THE X FACTOR but Bigger!.' We hope to raise a great deal of money and awareness for the charity through the project," he said.
The official, yet un-written single will be sold through HMV and Napster with all proceeds being donated to Nordoff-Robbins.
Joe Meaney of Nordoff-Robbins said, "Music is part of our lives -- a universal language. Music therapy builds on the knowledge that everyone, no matter how ill, disabled or traumatized, can respond to music. The money this unique idea raises will go towards the clinical, educational and research work done at our centre in London, and at more than 40 outreach projects across the U.K."
Dave Elston from HMV adds, "Here at HMV, we have always supported new talent and new formats to sell music and our digital music service gives us a great opportunity to work with young talent and help support them. The project is very exciting and should help to raise a lot of money for Nordoff-Robbins, who do a fantastic job with music therapy."
"There's always been a very strong community element to Napster which makes the concept of this project very appealing to us," said Napster UK & international programming director Jeff Smith. "I am impressed with the enterprising nature of Be The Band and how the students are harnessing the digital media environment to create their own unique content."
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
