At last year's BT Digital Music Awards, YouTube beat Spotify, Last.fm, MySpace, SoundCloud and BBC 6 Music to the publicly-voted title of "Best Place to Hear Music". That, as well as the genuinely rapturous response to the site's win from the audience of young pop fans, underlined the fact that, for many, YouTube is as much a cherished on-demand music listening resource as it is a video site. Now, they've expanded that service. Following a number of one-offs, YouTube has unveiled a dedicated streaming section, youtube.com/live, where selected YouTube partners can webcast live. One of the first to take advantage is the Coachella festival, America's nearest equivalent to Glastonbury, which will broadcast a selection of its acts, from today until Sunday. Head to youtube.com/coachella from tonight to watch live footage of artists, slated to include the National, Mumford & Sons, Duran Duran, PJ Harvey, Interpol and Cut Copy.
That last act is also the latest band to appear on the excellent Swedish music TV programme Klubbland, a 20-minute show which features a short interview with a particular artist alongside live highlights of their gig in a Swedish venue. The Cut Copy episode, which you can watch in full at klubbland.se, features the groovesome Australians wandering around Malmo searching out good coffee and old records, before belting out three songs in the city's Kulturbolaget venue. Meanwhile, the previous episode features Glasvegas discussing their success and playing some of their new songs in snowy Stockholm. Trawl back through the other 27 shows uploaded so far and you'll find Lloyd Cole, Teenage Fanclub, Lykke Li, Beach House and, perhaps best of all, Robyn. It's hard to think of a British music TV show as tasteful and enjoyable as this.
According to a study of 4,500 US high-school students published last week, only 22% of teenagers would be willing to pay 99¢ to download a single track, despite the fact that 77% of them admitted to downloading music from the internet (with almost two-thirds getting it from file-sharing sites). In that climate, the offer of a (seemingly) legal free download isn't as exciting as it once was, but it's still worth checking out the latest Monthly Mix from Stereogum, the mighty US music blog. The compilation, available from bit.ly/sgapril, features 10 mostly-excellent tracks from acts recently featured on the site, including their three latest Bands to Watch, all of which happen to be impressive, female-fronted indie/electro popsters. With the album also featuring a gorgeously sparse track from the new solo album by Smog's Bill Callahan, it's definitely worth a download.
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