Blastbeat (company)

Infobox_Company
company_name = Blastbeat
company_
company_type = Social Enterprise
slogan = The Music Business Game
foundation = 2003
location = Dublin, Ireland
regions = Ireland, UK, USA, Slovakia, South Africa
key_people = Robert Stephenson Founder / President, Jeff Watson, CEO
industry = Education, Music, Business, Internet, Social Networking, Events
products = Schools Programmes, DVDs, CDs, Concerts, Bands
homepage = [http://www.blastbeat.org www.blastbeat.org]

Blastbeat is an award winning multi-disciplinary international social enterprise and music business programme and competition for second level or high schools. Blastbeat has music as its core product and also its hook, as music and multimedia is a key interest for the majority of teenagers.

[http://www.blastspace.com BlastSpace] is an alternative youth community and event promoter. It is a subsidiary of Blastbeat.

Blastbeat owns BlastSpace and runs the annual Blastbeat Music Business Game which has been running in Ireland since 2003. Coca-Cola are the sponsors of Blastbeat in Ireland. Mr. Price are the sponsors in South Africa.

It organises concerts all over Ireland - Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Derry, Limerick, Wexford, Sligo, Galway, Donegal and Louth. Blastbeat has also branched out to the United States, South Africa, the UK, Slovakia and Belgium in recent years.

Blastbeat

Blastbeat is an award winning Music & Multimedia Business Programme offered to second level students in schools internationally to teach business & entrepreneurial skills, promote young musicians & bands, and create a global youth community with a shared interest in reducing world poverty and helping the environment.

Blastbeat is the educational branch of the Blastspace Network; an online and offline youth community of musicians and music lovers who meet regularly at Blastspace Live music events and online on the creative and social network Blastspace.com. Blastbeat regions currently include Ireland (Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht), Belgium, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Slovakia and the United States in New York City, Los Angeles, Austin and Chicago.

Students and contestants will showcase their work and achievements at the Blastbeat Finals to be held in each region in May. The winners of the finals will also go on to represent their region at the World Finals held in Dublin, Ireland in December 2009.

With Blastbeat, Teenagers organize themselves into Music & Multimedia Companies (MMCs), with each member of the company taking on a different job role. These include CEO, Sales & Marketing Manager, Talent scout, Web Manager, Video Editor, Photographer & Journalist to name but a few.

The main challenge for the MMC is to organize & produce their own live music event. They do this by finding the best of original music talent in their local areas and showcasing them. Winning Bands are selected by a panel of industry professionals and progress to the Finals in their region. The winning act receives a trip to the world final to compete with other regional winners for the highly coveted prize of a record deal with Blastspace Records.

Blastbeat therefore allows young people to help shape the future of their own local music scene and ultimately decide what bands/musicians will be next big thing. Bands currently signed to Blastspace Records include former Blastbeat Finalists Steer Clear & Homestar Runner, who both recorded and released albums in 2007.

As an MMC, students carry out a variety of specific tasks throughout a 3 Month Module and are graded both on a continuous assessment bases and their presentation at the MMC Exhibition on the day of their Regional Final. The winning MMCs receive a trip to the World Finals in Ireland where they compete with other regional winners for the prize of a €5,000 investment in their winning business ideas.

The Blastbeat programme that began in Ireland in 2003 is a tried and tested means of nurturing multimedia, musical and business skills among teenagers while encouraging them to work as part of a team and invest in their local community, thus becoming social entrepreneurs in the process. Blastbeat incorporates a very strong charity aspect and has been involved with supporting a variety of worthy charities & social initiatives including MyLife in South Africa and 2WinAid in Sri Lanka. Since its inception, Blastbeat has enjoyed great success globally where more than 650 alcohol and drug free concerts have been staged by more than 3,000 young bands to audiences of more than 180,000 young people.

The Blastbeat programme is provided to schools, students, & bands completely free of charge and is financed through a combination of sponsorship income, equity investment & grant aid.

Blastbeat aims to run in over 30 countries by 2012.

tructure of the Programme in Ireland

Schools can choose to participate in one of the following two modules:

Module 1: September – December (Maximum Time: 90 Days)

Module 2: January – April (Maximum Time: 90 Days)

chools, Regions, and Events

Number of Schools: up to 25 per module (Ireland)Number of Regions:

Northern Region

• County Antrim, County Armagh, County Down, County Fermanagh, County Londonderry, County Tyrone.

outhern Region

• County Cork, County Kerry, County Limerick, County Tipperary, County Waterford.

Eastern Region (x2)

• County Carlow, County Cavan, Dublin, County Kildare, County Kilkenny, County Laois, County Longford, County Louth, County Meath, County Monaghan, County Offaly, County Westmeath, County Wexford, County Wicklow.

Western Region

• County Clare, County Donegal, County Galway, County Leitrim, County Mayo, County Roscommon, County Sligo.

Number of Schools per Region:

North: 8 (4 per module)

South: 12 (6 per module)

East: 20 (10 per module)

West: 10 (5 per module)

Number of Events

Up to 50 School concerts (November / March)

5 Regional Finals (April)

1 National Final (May)

1 World Final (December).

Blastspace

Blastspace.com is the creative and social network of the Blastbeat and Blastspace Network. By Bands For Fans, Blastspace.com brings together music creators and music consumers and allows you to be truly involved in deciding, creating, producing and promoting the music that you are passionate about. It provides a forum where bands and fans can come together along with event organisers, music writers, individual artists, promoter and producers.

Blastspace.com is also the hub of activity for our Blastbeat programme where Mini Companies can collaborate via an online toolkit to plan and organise events, promote artists you have discovered through the programme and collaborate with the other MMCs across the globe.

Once you have learned the art of event organisation, promotions, and business skills through Blastbeat, you can graduate to BlastSpace Live. The world’s first online and offline music community supported by a turnkey platform which integrates e-commerce, email and online marketing tools, list management and enhance social networking features in one easy to use website.

Blastspace.com supports a new breed of record label that is needed for the new digital age. Live music is as popular as ever, digital downloading of music is exploding worldwide, and social networking has penetrated youth lives. We recognise this change and have built an innovative platform that allows the fans to decide who gets the next big break.

Blastspace.com provides an online social network and creative, secure and safe connection between the offline and online musical worlds and empowers teens to create and choose their own music.

The site also features [http://www.blastspace.com/tv videos] and recordings of BlastSpace and Blastbeat bands as well [http://www.blastspace.com/photos photos] from Blast gigs dating back from 2004 to the present day. Despite Blastspace being almost entirely based in Ireland, the site mentions a worldwide community with intentions to branch out to other countries. In 2007 Blastbeat setup in New York, Los Angeles and Cape Town and the UK.

It is intended for Blastspace.com to play a major part in the 2008 Blastbeat competition, where bands would have to have a Blastspace profile in order to enter the competition and could go further in the competition with more profile views.

There was a promotion of Blastbeat in Ireland where the Coca Cola Blastbeat awards were set up on Bebo. Here the band whose song was added to most playlists on Bebo got the chance to go straight into the finals. Blastspace members receive reductions on tickets to the National Final every May.

=Blastspace Records=To coincide with the launch of Blastspace.com, a record company was started called Blastspace records to help promote bands that were discovered and developed through the Blastbeat schools competition and the Blastspace Live gigs.

Blastspace Records is part of the commercial arm of Blastbeat Ltd that creats, aggregates and ommercializes Intellectual Property Rights primarily un the forms of music, film and associated merchandise.

Typically Blastspace Records will sign an artist or band for one to three albums, three being the most common. Before offering a deal to an artist, Blastspace Records will generally use its proven filtration and teenage approval formula of the Blastbeat system of Blastbeat Battle of the Bands.

The label released Emily's debut album 'This Is Our Emergency' and Steer Clear's debut album 'No, You Hang Up' with both having minor success in the Irish charts. The label is currently promoting and releasing Steer Clear's new single 'Comebacks Aren't Your Thing'.

Blastspace Bands

[http://www.blastspace.com/bluesyndrome Blue Syndrome]

[http://www.blastspace.com/homestarrunner Home Star Runner]

[http://www.blastspace.com/hotstop Nightbox]

[http://www.blastspace.com/steerclear Steer Clear]

[http://www.blastspace.com/impressionists The Impressionists]

=Blastspace Live=

Blastspace Live is a national gigging tour organised by bands, fans and alumni of the Blastbeat Programme. Blastspace Live allows enthusiastic young people the opportunity to organise gigs in their hometown - giving them direct input into their local [music] and social scene.

One of the most common complaints amongst youth and parents concerns the lack of activities available for teenagers. Outside of sport and hobbies, teeneagers get little chance to socialise in a safe and alcohol free environment. Blastspace Live directly addresses this, and provides a safe, creative channel for teenagers to express themselves through music and through event organisation.

The Blastspace Live circuit allows those who have excelled in the Blastbeat schools programme to continue on with their passion and it also gives unsigned young bands an opportunity to build fan bases and get gig experience. The alumni, fans and bands who have been with Blastspace and Blastbeat for several years organise the over 18s events targeting college and university students.

Blastspace Live events run throughout the year. During the summer months various competitions and initiatives exist to cater for the ever growing new band population applying through [www.blastspace.com Blastspace.com] . Summer 2008 sees the Blastspace / Sunday World ' [http://www.blastspace.com/laorbusk LA or Busk] ' Competition. It involves 8 heats to take place all over Ireland, and one final where the winning act will win a trip to Los Angeles.

=Previous Winners of Blastbeat=

IRELAND

Bands

2003 / 2004 - Silence Jakk

2005 / 2006 - [http://www.blastspace.com/impressionists The Impressionists]

2006 / 2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/hotstop Nightbox (Formerly Hotstop)]

2007 / 2008 - [http://www.blastspace.com/silkeborg Silkeborg]

Mini Companies

2003 / 2004 - Phonic TY, St. Columba's College, Stranorlar, Co. Donegal

2005 / 2006 - Pulse TY, St. Columba's College, Stranorlar, Co. Donegal

2006 / 2007 - Criminal Records, Ballincollig CS, Co. Cork

2007 / 2008 - [http://www.blastspace.com/audiocircus Audio Circus] , Ballincollig CS, Co. Cork

BELGIUM

Bands

2004 / 2005 - Revox

Mini Companies

2004 / 2005 - Ultrason

OUTH AFRICA

Bands

2006 / 2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/hamza Hamza]

Mini Companies

2006 / 2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/musikaap Musikaap]

USA

LA

Bands

2006 / 2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/themichaelcraigband The Michael Craig Band]

2007 / 2008 - [http://www.blastspace.com/somewhereelse Somewhere Else]

Mini Companies

2006 / 2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/highxvoltage High Voltage] , Santa Monica High School

2007 / 2008 - [http://www.blastspace.com/urbanrevoltrecords Urban Revolt Records] , Animo Film & Theater Arts School

New York

Bands

2006 / 2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/vertigo Vertigo]

Mini Companies

2006/2007 - [http://www.blastspace.com/blacksheeprecords Black Sheep Records] , Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School, Times Square

Austin

Bands

2007 / 2008 - Blues Mafia

Mini Companies

2007 / 2008 - [http://www.blastspace.com/darthbetarecords DarthBeta Records] , Akins High School, Austin, Texas

LOVAKIA

Bands

2007 / 2008 - The Paranoid

Mini Companies

2007 / 2008 - TBD-

=External links=
* [http://www.blastbeat.org Blastbeat, The Music Business Game for Schools]

* [http://www.blastspace.com, Blastspace, The Online/Offline Social Networking Site, By Bands, For Fans]