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The government has abandoned its plans to privatise England’s public forests because of opposition from the public and MPs, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has told the Commons.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A Somali pirate who pleaded guilty to hijacking a US merchant ship is sentenced in the US to more than 33 years in prison.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A man jailed for life for murdering his baby daughter in Glasgow is freed by appeal judges.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
14-week-old Cameron died in 2008 A jury has found a 26-year-old man guilty of murdering his baby son.
Cameron Jay Leslie was 14-weeks-old when he died in hospital on 6 September, 2008. He had suffered severe injuries to several parts of his body.
On Wednesday, a Belfast Crown Court jury found his father Ryan Leslie guilty of murder and causing grievous bodily harm.
The judge told Leslie, of Ballyvesey Green in Newtownabbey, that he had “brutalised and murdered” his son.
‘Mixed emotions’
Leslie was given a mandatory life sentence and his tariff will be set at a hearing on 18 March.
During the trial, the court heard evidence that Cameron’s death was due to his brain swelling up so much that it cut off the oxygen supply to his brain stem.
Deputy State Pathologist for Northern Ireland, Dr Peter Ingram told the jury that he had uncovered numerous bruises to both of Cameron’s arms, his legs, torso, throat and chin.
The doctor also uncovered a total of 14 rib fractures, all of which were “typical of injuries seen in cases of child abuse”.
Speaking outside the court, Cameron’s mother Sheree Black said she had “mixed emotions” at the jury’s verdict.
“I will never, ever, forgive Ryan Leslie for what he has done and I will never ever forget it,” Miss Black said.
Asked if the verdicts would bring any closure for her, she replied: “Hopefully from today that will be something to look forward to but there will always be a hole in my heart where Cameron was.”
‘Heavy loss’
The judge told Leslie: “Your defence was based on the propositions that you were a victim wrongly accused and also a grieving father who deserved sympathy.
“But the truth is you brutalised and murdered a 14-week-old baby – your son. And for that I sentence you to life imprisonment.”
The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Superintendent Jonathan Roberts, said his thoughts were with baby Cameron.
“It is a tragedy that his young life was ended so brutally by the one person who should have been his protector,” he said.
“There are no winners in this case and the detectives involved in the investigation into Cameron’s death would like to extend their sympathy to the entire family circle. They have a heavy loss to bear.
“From a professional perspective, it is gratifying that we have been able to secure a murder conviction in a type of case where convictions for less serious offences are often more prevalent.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Mr Cameron called the court ruling ‘offensive’ A commission to investigate a British Bill of Rights will be set up “imminently”, David Cameron has said.
He told MPs it was about time decisions were made in Parliament, not in courts.
The Conservatives had wanted to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 with a UK Bill of Rights but that was opposed by their Lib Dem coalition partners.
Instead a commission is being set up to look into it. Last week MPs rejected a European Court of Human Rights ruling on giving prisoners the vote.
The vote, prompted by Tory backbencher David Davis and former Labour home secretary Jack Straw, was not binding but could put pressure on ministers to go against the Strasbourg court’s ruling.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Mr Cameron responded to Tory MP Phillip Davies who complained about a ruling that sex offenders could appeal against having to register with the police for life.
Mr Cameron told MPs Mr Davies “speaks for many people when he says how completely offensive it is to have once again a ruling by a court that seems to fly completely in the face of common sense”.
He added: “The commission we are establishing to look at a British bill of rights will be established imminently because I think it’s about time we started making sure decisions are made in this Parliament rather than in the courts.”
BBC deputy political editor James Landale said it was unlikely to lead to Britain pulling out of the European human rights legislation, but the commission might look at how the laws were interpreted and whether there should be a different balance between rights – for example making public safety more important than the right of offenders to a private life.
Home Secretary Theresa May said Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Justice Secretary Ken Clarke would be giving more details shortly.
But she told MPs the commission would “investigate the creation of a British bill of rights”.
“It is time to assert that it is Parliament that makes our laws, not the courts that the rights of the public come before the rights of criminals and above all that we have a legal framework that brings sanity to cases such as these.”
The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the rights enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights into UK law.
These include the right to life, the right to family, freedom from torture and the right to a fair trial.
But critics say the act makes it harder for British courts to extradite criminals and has also led the current controversies over prisoners being able to vote and sex offenders having the right to appeal to get their name removed from the sex offenders register.
The coalition deal says the commission will look into a British Bill of Rights “that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties”.
The Conservatives’ policy on having a British bill of rights with priority over European human rights laws was put forward by then shadow home secretary David Davis in 2005.
Labour had looked at having a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities as the basis of a written constitution – the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw believed a written statement of “common values” would help social cohesion.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Mr Esbester went missing after going out on a trek intended to last for half a day. A British tourist who survived five days in the New Zealand wilderness has been reunited with his family.
James Esbester, 30, from Waterlooville, Hants, went missing in the Wangapeka area of Kahurangi National Park, last Thursday.
He survived without food and made a makeshift “help” sign which was spotted by helicopter crews despatched to search for him.
Mr Esbester was taken to hospital where he was treated for hypothermia.
He became lost after originally going out on a trek intended to last half a day.
“ I was following a river so I had plenty of water at least”
James Esbester
But he had not been seen since writing in a log book of his intention to climb Mount Luna.
He was spotted on the Crow Riverbed on Monday about 10km from Mt Luna and well off his intended route.
Search controller Insp Hugh Flower said the helicopter had been sent to check remote huts outside the search area in order to eliminate them from the search when the pilot spotted Mr Esbester waving.
Mr Esbester said: “Because I had taken half a day’s snacks with me all of them had mostly gone by the time I was trekking down the mountain, but I was following a river so I had plenty of water at least.
“I had gone up the mountain wearing contact lenses and after a couple of day’s I really had to get rid of them so essentially after that I couldn’t see very well either.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Mervyn King: ‘There is evidence of a significant margin of spare capacity in the economy’
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has said inflation will rise sharply in the first half of this year before falling back next year.
But he said there were “large risks” that inflation could overshoot or undershoot the Bank’s 2% target.
He reiterated his belief that external factors, such as rising food and energy prices, are the main cause of rising prices in the UK.
Mr King said growth would be weaker than the Bank forecast in November.
He said that once cost pressures from high commodity prices subside, “CPI inflation will then fall back. But the extent to which it will do so is uncertain, and there are large risks in both directions.”
On Thursday, official figures showed that inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), rose to 4% in January from 3% in December. Measured by the Retail Price Index (RPI), which includes mortgage interest payments, it rose to 5.1% from 4.8%.
Mr King was forced to write a letter to the Chancellor, George Osborne, to explain why CPI inflation was twice the Bank’s target rate.
“Only time will tell. The judgements are difficult.”
These words from Mervyn King, from his opening remarks at the media conference, summed up the Bank’s dilemma.
Raising interest rates too soon could stifle a fragile recovery – and the Bank has revised down its growth projection for 2011.
Continued high inflation could push up inflation expectations – which would force the bank to intervene.
The governor and his colleagues will have several more uncomfortable months and tricky decisions.
The governor said if businesses and households expected that high inflation was here to stay, prices and wages might rise even more quickly.
On the other hand, as the effects of the rise in VAT to 20% implemented in January and imported cost pressures began to diminish, there was a risk that weak growth “will push inflation well below target,” he said.
Mr King said there were “real differences of view” in the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, which sets interest rates, about “the likely path of inflation in the medium term”.
Two members, Andrew Sentance and Martin Weale, have already voted to raise interest rates, currently at a record low of 0.5%, to combat rising prices.
The split reflects the wider debate among economists, with some arguing that rates should be increased to prevent inflation rising further, and others maintaining that a rate rise would jeopardise the fragile economic recovery.
In light of the latest figures showing inflation rising faster, and Mr King’s letter to the chancellor, more observers now believe the Bank could raise rates sometime over the summer.
Mr King said the recovery was “unlikely to be smooth”, while the Bank’s economic growth projection for most of this year was now “weaker” than it forecast towards the end of last year.
The UK economy shrank by 0.5% in the final three months of last year, but had it not been for the heavy snow in December, Mr King said growth would have been 2% for 2010 as a whole.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
There have been repeated warnings about the threat of cyber attack A cyber attack by one state on another could be considered an “act of war”, Tony Blair’s former top national security adviser has said.
Sir Richard Mottram told a House of Lords inquiry new “laws of war” were needed to cope with such a threat.
He also criticised the EU after the multi-million pound theft of carbon credits, saying its apparent lack of cyber security “took my breath away”.
It comes amid claims the threat of cyber war is being exaggerated.
Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary William Hague called for countries to come together to agree a set of rules to prevent cyber war.
He revealed that the Foreign Office IT system had come under attack from a ”hostile state intelligence agency” as recently as January.
Sir Richard, a former top civil servant at several government departments, who ended his Whitehall career in 2007 as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, appeared to back Mr Hague’s call for new international rules in evidence to the Lords EU sub-commitee on Home Affairs.
“Could a cyber attack constitute an act of war? Absolutely. If you could establish who had done it of course… is it feasible to imagine laws of war that could apply in relation to cyber attack? Answer – it is feasible,” said Sir Richard, who was also in charge of the previous government’s counter-terrorism strategy.
He was also asked for his reaction to the theft last month of 7m euros (£5.9m) of emission permits from the European Commission’s carbon trading system.
“I think it is pretty clear that cyber security is inadequate both in a number of the national offices that run the emission trading scheme and in Brussels”
Lord Hannay Lords EU Home Affairs Committee
According to the Financial Times, it was believed to have been the work of computer hackers who used a hoax bomb threat to get a building in Prague evacuated before stealing codes and allowances from computers.
The allowances could be sold on the open market for “millions of euros” before anyone would have noticed, the newspaper said.
It said there have been at least six attacks on operators of the EU emissions trading system in eastern and central Europe in the past three months – with thieves taking more than 50 million euros – before trading was suspended.
Asked if he had confidence in the EU’s cyber security systems following these incidents, Sir Richard said: “I wouldn’t have generalised confidence in those systems – no.”
He said the Prague incident, in particular, highlighted the vulnerability of EU-wide computer systems.
“These are all systems issues where people seek out the weakest point. So it’s no use the UK having the most fabulous security, which I don’t suggest it has, but it has in many areas adequate security, if it is also sharing information with others who aren’t anywhere near our level,” he said.
Commenting specifically on the carbon credits theft, he said: “They (the EU) don’t seem to have realised until quite recently that they were an attractive target, which rather took my breath away.”
Committee chairman, crossbench peer Lord Hannay, also criticised the EU’s cyber security systems following the Prague incident.
“We have asked the government to give us the best knowledge they have about what happened in this case.
“But I think it is pretty clear that cyber security is inadequate both in a number of the national offices that run the emission trading scheme and in Brussels.
“That would not be a particularly surprising discovery but it does have important implications for the need for the EU to do something about its own security, its own institutions’ security, as well as looking into the wider issue of all the member states.”
The Lords EU Home Affairs sub-committee is investigating the EU’s internal security strategy.
It comes as one of Britain’s leading cyber security experts, BT’s head of security Bruce Schneier, told BBC News the threat of cyber war had been exaggerated and was based on only a handful of incidents around the world.
His view appeared to be backed by Howard Schmidt, cyber security co-ordinator for the White House, who called for an end to the use of inflammatory language when talking about internet security.
“Cyber war is a turbo metaphor that does not address the issues we are looking at like cyber espionage, cyber crime, identity theft, credit card fraud,” he told reporters at a conference in San Francisco.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
There are reports of violent protests in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
Eyewitnesses told the BBC that the unrest had been triggered by the arrest of a lawyer who is an outspoken critic of the government.
The lawyer was later said to have been released, but the demonstrations reportedly continued.
Pro-democracy protests have swept through several Arab countries in recent weeks, forcing the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt from power.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Farepak had run a Christmas club and hamper business since 1968 before its collapse in 2006 Legal proceedings to disqualify directors of the failed Christmas hamper business Farepak have begun in the High Court.
The government’s Insolvency Service said it had applied to the court to disqualify all nine former directors of Farepak and its parent company.
The nine, including former CBI boss Sir Clive Thompson, will fight the action.
Farepak, which ran a Christmas savings scheme, collapsed in 2006 leaving the average customer £400 out of pocket.
It had more than 100,000 customers who signed up to spread the cost of Christmas across the year.
A statement from the Insolvency Service said the application to the High Court was made in the public interest on the grounds that “the conduct of each director in relation to the relevant company or companies makes him or her unfit to be a director”.
Farepak was not regulated by the Financial Services Authority and its customers subsequently received only about 17.5p in the pound from a government-backed response fund set up after the company’s collapse.
Last year they heard they would receive a further 15p in the pound after Farepak’s joint liquidators, BDO Stoy Hayward, announced that an action against the directors of Farepak had been settled for £4m, with no admission of liability by the directors.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has been shot dead and a second wounded in Mexico.
Officials say the pair, described as “special agents” shot “in the line of duty”, were driving between Mexico City and northern city of Monterrey.
An official told AP they had been attacked after stopping at a security checkpoint in San Luis Potosi state.
The attack comes as a US report says a fifth of the Mexico border, some 375 miles (600km), is not properly guarded.
The investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO), said the area lacked enough border agents to stop illicit activity such as gun running and illegal immigration.
‘Line of duty’
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency described the two victims as “special agents” based in the US capital, AFP reports.
The agency said they were “shot in the line of duty” on Tuesday.
The attack occurred some 200 miles (320 km) north of Mexico City, a spokeswoman for the state’s public security office told Reuters.
The agency said it was working with the state department, US law enforcement and Mexican authorities to investigate the shooting.
Though there are high levels of violence among members of competing drug cartels within Mexico, US officials are rarely targeted.
However, in March 2010 a US consulate employee, her husband and a Mexican linked to the American consulate were killed by drug gang members in Ciudad Juarez.
In July, it temporarily closed the consulate in the city after receiving unspecified threats.
The GAO report said the US had spent $3bn last year on controlling its southern border.
It said it had been able to increase the area under control by building more fences and almost doubling the number of agents from 10,000 to 17,500.
Security at the US-Mexico border has long been a hot political issue, with many in the Southern United States calling for more to be done to stop drug smugglers and human traffickers from entering the US.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The national outpouring of grief at Diana’s death took many by surprise The death of Diana is often said to be the moment the UK lost its stiff upper lip and the British started being comfortable crying in public. But have we always been a nation for mass outpourings of national grief?
In recent years it seems Britain has become a nation of cry-babies, despite its long-held reputation for keeping emotions firmly buttoned up.
From the most unlikely politicians and public figures – including Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell – to just about everyone on a TV talent show, the tears are coming thick and fast.
Often, this shift towards public crying is linked with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. This collective moment of mourning is seen as releasing a nation from the restraints of being reserved and stoical.
But the British actually have a long history of very public outpourings of grief and their reputation for being emotionally reserved is only a relatively recent thing, says historian Dr Thomas Dixon, who is researching a history of crying.
Gushing
The public show of grief at Diana’s death is nothing new. She was one in a long line of public figures to be mourned en masse.
Nelson’s death made people weep in the streets “We’ve been a pretty weepy country through the centuries until the 20th Century,” says Dr Dixon.
“It was unusually dry in terms of tears. There was a lot of stoicism and reserve. But if we go back before the 20th Century, we have other peaks of sentiments, emotion and weeping in the late 18th and up to the mid-19th Century. There’s been more crying than you might think.
“Even in the 19th Century there were large outpourings of national grief in response to the death of famous figures.”
One comparable event was the death of Admiral Lord Nelson in 1805. He had won the Battle of Trafalgar against the French and Spanish navies, but died in doing so.
“There was a huge state funeral and there were many pieces of journalism reporting the event in the national press and many of them talk about ‘tears gushing from every eye’ and the ‘nation’s tears’, ‘Britannia’s tears’ at the falling of her hero and poems about Nelson and so on,” says Dr Dixon.
We are currently in a middle of a new wave of weeping in public life, he says. It started in the 1990s, with incidents like Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street with tears in her eyes in 1990. In the same year Gazza bawled his eyes out at the World Cup. Then there was mass crying when Princess Diana died.
Irritated
“We may have much more to come,” he warns.
So where did Britain’s reputation for the stiff upper lip come from?
From an evolutionary perspective, when babies cry it is about survival, says Virginia Eatough, a psychologist specialising in crying.
Infants cry because they’re hungry, in pain, because they want to be picked up and cared for. It’s about forming a bond with their care givers.
For adults it is about communicating, she says. When most people see a crying face, they feel an urge to ask what is wrong and offer help or empathy.
“That came from World War II,” says Dr Dixon. “The 20th Century is where the tears started to dry up. A time of war is no time for weeping, whether you’re on the home front or fighting the war against Hitler around the world.
“It’s at that point that this ethos emerges that however much private grief one might have, this ethos emerges that British people don’t cry because they are strong and determined and resilient and stoical.”
Social historian Dr Julie-Marie Strange says that until the mid-19th Century, it was considered fine for men and women to cry in public.
“It’s particularly surprising for us when you get Victorian men crying in public. It was deemed fine to cry at a bereavement at a particular situation, for example because of a child death. Lots of people admitted crying at the death of Little Nell in the Old Curiosity Shop [by Charles Dickens].”
Even before the Victorian period officially began, there were occasions of conspicuous public mourning, says Dr Strange.
“The heroes were Byron and Shelley, men who made careers and reputations from being very emotional.”
When Byron died in 1824, nearly 20 years after Nelson, lots of young men wore black armbands and wept openly, she says. But by the end of the century, the tone had changed so much that such behaviour was characterised as weak and intellectually stunted.
From the 1880s onwards, it became less acceptable for men particularly to cry in public, she says, partly due to the emergence of what has been called “muscular Christianity”, which emphasised a vigorous masculinity in the face of anxieties about the decline of the Empire and the degeneration of Britain as a nation.
This change was best symbolised by writer Oscar Wilde, who sneered at the grief displayed by fans of Charles Dickens over Little Nell.
“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing,” he famously remarked.
What Wilde would make of today’s blubbing, one can only imagine.
I remember seeing all the attention-seeking proles laying their service station begonias outside Buck House, and thinking: ‘I don’t recognise this country any more’. Was it a coincidence that we then went into thirteen of New Labour government with its appeasement, relativism and moral flabbiness?
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Snapshots of London life through the photographic age
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
BHP’s profits are again at a record thanks to the continung boom in commodity prices The world’s biggest mining firm BHP Billiton has made record half-year profits, and is promising to give back $10bn (£6.25bn) to shareholders.
First-half profits nearly doubled to $10.5bn as the boom in demand for commodities boosted prices of its iron ore and copper products.
The Anglo-Australian company said it expected demand to continue to rise.
BHP, which was forced to call off a merger with Canada’s giant Potash Corp, benefits hugely from Chinese demand.
The company’s chief executive, Marius Kloppers, said in a statement: “While we expect a slowdown in the growth rate of global commodity demand in calendar year 2011, the economic environment still underpins a robust near term outlook for our products.”
BHP has virtually no debt, and with the failure of the recent Potash merger has no obvious target for a new major tie-up.
Potash was the latest significant potential deal to founder in the past three years.
Shareholders will now see $10bn returned to them in a buy-back of shares.
Such a move reduces the number of shares in issue, meaning there are fewer pieces of the company, which then attract a bigger share of any profits.
A similar move has been announced by BHP’s arch rival, Rio Tinto.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Adverts placed on YouTube videos can turn a profit for their creators. It’s no secret that the last decade has been tough for the music industry. Hit by piracy, recession and falling sales, record labels have shed artists and staff in an effort to stay afloat.
Costs have been cut in almost every area, with one glaring exception.
“What people tend to forget is there is a fixed cost in breaking artists,” said Mark Robinson, vice-president of Warner Music last year.
“On average, it still costs $1million (£621,000) to promote and launch a new band.”
It’s a big figure – incorporating the price of recording an album, styling a band, marketing their music and everything else that finally, hopefully, pushes an act into the mainstream.
But is there an alternative?
A growing number of musicians are establishing their careers on YouTube, with little or no financial outlay. Last year, an unsigned band from New York even entered the Billboard charts courtesy of their online fanbase.
The Gregory Brothers first came to attention with their “auto-tune the news” series, where political debates and press conferences were transformed into miniature operas, thanks to pitch-shifting computer software.
The Gregory Brothers insert themselves into news footage to duet with political leaders Early videos saw Hilary Clinton singing about Somalian pirates, while the US Congress debated climate change as a call-and-response gospel song.
“Singing is happening all the time when we’re talking, but our brains are just too feeble to parse it as music,” explains Michael Gregory. “I can change that in the studio.”
The clips, equal parts technical experiment and political satire, became a word-of-mouth success, much to the band’s surprise.
“After playing a number of shows with 10 audience members we dreamed that, by putting videos online, we could capture double that,” says Michael.
“There’s definitely been interest in our group from record labels, but they mostly came to us out of confusion”
Evan Gregory The Gregory Brothers
“We knew at least that our mums and their six friends would watch, so we could garner at least 12 views,” adds vocalist Sarah Fullen Gregory.
The group (actually three brothers and one sister-in-law) regularly gain more than four million views every time they upload a video. Each viewer earns them money, thanks to YouTube’s partner programme, and fans have started buying their songs on iTunes.
The chart breakthrough came last summer, after they composed a song based on a disturbing news report from Alabama. A local resident had been assaulted by an intruder in her bedroom. Interviewed for a news report, her brother, Antoine Dodson, launched into a florid tirade against her attacker.
His warning: “hide your kids, hide your wives” became the hook for a propulsive R&B track, which sold more than 100,000 copies, peaking at number 89 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Antoine Dodson’s rant became a chart hit. Profits were shared with his family. “It still feels really strange,” says Evan Gregory.
“This week, I was opening a business bank account and I was trying to explain what our small business is. And the banker was like, ‘Oh, so you guys make videos kind of like that Antoine Dodson video?’ and I replied, ‘That is in fact one of the videos that we made.'”
“It’s not much of a living, but we have one,” adds Michael. “Everything we do is independent and all of our songs originate on YouTube, so it’s kind of a new model that we’re making up as we go along.”
Advertising revenue
But they’re not alone. Over in the UK, a duo called Brett Domino have carved out a similar reputation on YouTube.
Brett Domino (pictured) – Timberlake medley The Gregory Brothers – Double Rainbow Song Pomplamoose – Telephone
Based in Leeds, they play cover versions of chart hits on stylophones, drum pads, ukuleles and iPhone apps. Their songs are delivered in broad northern accents with a studious deadpan – sort of like a less charismatic Pet Shop Boys – and they’ve won a legion of followers.
“We did a Justin Timberlake medley played entirely on handheld instruments, and Justin Timberlake picked up on it,” says Brett. “He was a big fan of that video – and our profile’s just continued to build and build.”
Ste, the silent partner of the group, still holds down a job at a local theatre, but that’s partly because the duo refuse to exploit their audience.
“We’re making a bit off advertising on YouTube,” says Brett, “but the big money is made off pre-roll advertising, which means you have to sit through a three-minute advert before you watch our video, and we think that’s not really fair.
“So on a few of the videos, there’s little text adverts on the side, which can be annoying, but it does generate a bit of cash. We’re also making money off merchandise. We have a range of t-shirts. We’re thinking of getting some mugs.”
“People think YouTube is a place for kittens and puppies and babies and boobs – but it’s really an untapped marketplace”
Nataly Dawn Pomplamoose
Multiple sources of income are they key to surviving online, as LA indie band Pomplamoose discovered in 2008.
“I was sitting on my computer, trying to figure out how to make a better living in the music industry,” says multi-instrumentalist Jack Conte.
“I noticed I had about three plays on MySpace and I went over to YouTube and I saw somebody do a cover song and they had about 600,000 views. I thought to myself, ‘man, I’m in the wrong place!'”
Switching to YouTube, he specifically exploited the site’s visual capacity, filming the recording process and using split-screen edits to show every instrument being played simultaneously. Conte also realised the power of cover versions, picking a few timely examples to capture an audience.
“The first one that went viral was Single Ladies by Beyonce,” he recalls. “It coincided perfectly with a couple of other viral videos that were going around at the time, all with that song.
“The magic pool of events just swirled around in the right direction and led to a lot of exposure for us.”
Pomplamoose’s “video songs” illustrate every stage of the recording process As their reputation has grown, Pomplamoose have introduced fans to their original material – catchy, acoustic, jazz-pop. Because they operate outside the traditional music industry, they retain all the master tapes, royalties and rights in their own music.
Celebrity fans include Ben Folds, who joined the band to record a song on his latest album. Over Christmas, they were invited to soundtrack a series of car adverts.
“One of the revenue streams, a big one, is cover versions,” says Jack. “That turns people on to our original tunes, which provides another revenue stream. And then another source of income is licensing – letting a TV show use one of our songs.
“But I’m not sure that we would only be able to do one of those things. It’s only the combination that leads to a reasonable, yearly income.”
Confusion
So what does the regular music industry make of this?
“I don’t believe record companies know what we do,” says Jack.
“A lot of them say they do, and yet they still use language like, ‘Hey, let’s make a viral video.’
“That’s a silly thing to say. It’s like saying, ‘let’s make a smash hit movie.’ You can make a movie and it either wins an Academy award or it doesn’t. It’s not something you can seek out.”
Evan Gregory agrees: “There’s definitely been interest in our group from record labels, but they mostly came to us out of confusion.
“They saw a song on the Billboard charts that they had nothing to do with and they said, ‘How did you guys do this without any help from us? Can you tell us how to do it so we can push you out of the business?’
Ben Folds enlisted Pomplamoose to record a bonus track for his last album “But in the end, we haven’t really found a model that will work for us on a major label. That’s not saying it can’t be done, we just haven’t done it yet. So we will continue to be independent for now.”
Brett Domino suggests the YouTube model is too capricious for a major label to pursue it.
“We certainly never had a business model – and if we’d set out and tried to do it, we probably wouldn’t have succeeded,” he says.
“But I’d certainly encourage people to make videos on YouTube and make their own songs, and upload them and promote them the way we have done. I just wouldn’t expect immediate success.”
On the contrary, says Pomplamoose vocalist Nataly Dawn. “We’ve recommended this to a lot of our friends, and a several of them are making a living out of it now.
“People think YouTube is a place for kittens and puppies and babies and boobs – but it’s really an untapped community and a marketplace.
“It’s hard to communicate to people who are attached to the old model of the music industry, but our model works for musicians who want to create their own music and keep that music for themselves.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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