The chosen track is recommended to every local BBC Introducing shows around the country, many of whom will then give it a spin on air in the following week, along with a nice little endorsement from Huw himself about why the song is so darn fantastic.

It could be a tune that has been uploaded to us, one that's been getting a lot of love locally on the BBC, or just something brilliantly out of the blue that Huw is championing.

Either way, we think these are tracks which deserve to reach more people. So, in addition to this great airplay exposure, we figured it would be a good idea to start sharing the Tip of the Week on this blog.

So, without further ado, here's Huw with this week's chosen track.

The Lost Levels - Training (Something in Construction)

The Lost Levels hail from Norwich and released Training as a single yesterday.

If you like what you hear, check them out on their February mini tour of Northampton, Nottingham, London, Brighton, Norwich, Bristol and Ipswich.

Here's the video for Training, which the band made with BBC Introducing in Norfolk:

Links

http://www.myspace.com/thelostlevels

The Indie Maximum Exposure 100 is an entire subsection created by a team of industry experts - plus artists making a fulltime living from music - and it offers, as the name suggests, a hundred nuggets of valuable advice that every recording artist would do well to consider. 

Every headline is followed by an explanatory blog and appropriate onward links. Whether it's "Get Involved in Your Home Town", "Join Charitable Organisations", "Post photos on Flickr" or "Create Cover Tune Videos" the site provides a comprehensive tool chest of creative promotional ideas - ranging from the fiendishly cunning to the blindingly obvious. That's why, by quite some margin, musicthinktank.com/100 is my Website of the Week.

Read our interview with Andrew Dubber and Bruce Warila from MusicThinkTank.com.

Listen to Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music

This week's label continues to push brilliant guitar pop to the masses, sometimes bubbling over with bands like Guillemots and Strange Death of Liberal England, and newly signed band, Race Horses.

How, when, where and why was the label set up?
The label was first set up by Darrin Robson, in the back room of a record shop in a small town on the outskirts of Belfast. Darrin formed the label to release vinyl EPs by his favourite bands. The first batch of releases included Television Personalities, Sultans Of Ping F.C., The Blue Aeroplanes and Ash.

Where did the name come from?
Fantastic Plastic was originally the name of the record shop which Darrin ran before the label started.

What's the ethos of the label and which artists are on it?
Darrin says it's amazing to discover new, exciting bands and artists and Fantastic Plastic aims to promote them to a wider audience. On their current roster are: Race Horses (former session guests of ours), Luke Haines (of Auteurs fame), plus Bearsuit and The Strange Death Of Liberal England, who are both currently recording new albums.

Any releases/gigs coming up?
Race Horses have this week just released their debut album "Goodbye Falkenburg". They are about to go on their first ever tour, supporting FanFarlo, with dates in Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, London, Brighton and Aberystwyth.

Also in the pipeline is a new single Love Letter To London from Luke Haines' current album, 21st Century Man.

If the label could sign any artist past or present, who would it be?
The Smiths. Because they were genius.

What's the favourite office snack at the label?
It's got to be crisps - Darrin's a big fan of cheese and onion.

If the label were an animal what would it be and why?
It would be a rabbit - they have the BEST ears!

Links

http://www.fpmusic.org

Launched late in 2008, Fairtilizer offers an alternative means for artists, labels and media to publish and promote music from one single place, offering public and private URLs for your tracks, playlists, widgets, statistics and more.

Based in Switzerland, Paris and New York, Fairtilizer describes itself as a 'Do It Yourself Music Club' and combines the licensing, publishing and selling opportunities of sites like Bandcamp with the easy customisation of access offered by the likes of Soundcloud.

Music discovery and rating options are available for music fans and consumers, and in its relatively short existence, Fairtilizer has managed to drum up a substantial following.

Their embeddable music widget can be used by bands and fans alike across all blogging platforms and social networking sites.

For example, here's a player created by Sheffield's Bromheads:

I think the site offers the best combination of attractiveness and functionality I've seen for a while, which is why Fairtilizer.com is my Website of the Week.

Tom Robinson presents BBC Introducing - Fresh on the Net on BBC 6 Music on Sunday and Monday nights.

Read Tom's previous Websites of the Week.

How, when, where and why was the label set up?
Krookz Inc and Krookz Digital were set up in early 2009 by Midlands DJs, Devize & Shookz. They both wanted a label to release their joint productions on.

Where did the name come from?
Devize and Shookz say they both agreed the word Krookz sounded good because they use a lot of samples in their tracks (and it just sounds cool). Then they added Inc to the end of it because they wanted it to be different.

Which artists are on the label?
Apart from their own drum and bass tracks, Devize and Shookz have also release a vocal track by Jah Screechy on Krookz Inc and there are tracks with MC Spyda coming soon on the label.

Any releases/gigs coming up?
There's a Krookz Inc label night at Deez Bar, Derby on 4th February where Devize and Shookz will be doing their first ever back-to-back set. They've got loads of good music lining up for release this year, but the next one will be their own MP3 single Acid Format, with B side Intallect, out on Krookz Digital on 10th February.

If the label could sign any artist past or present, who would you pick and why?
The Krookz boys say Notorious BIG, because he made a classic album and there hasn't been another artist since with such charisma, charm and extraordinary wordplay.

What's the favourite office snack at the label?
Shookz is into Cajun chicken wraps, but Devize prefers tea & chocolate HobNobs.

If the label were an animal, what would it be and why?
Devize reckons they'd be a bulldog because they're proud, bold, loyal and very distinctive, with a touch of class. Shookz says they'd be half meerkat and half iguana.

Links

http://www.myspace.com/krookzinc

Don't miss this week's Huw Stephens podcast, featuring two tracks from the Krookz label.

Website of the Week this week is the grandly-named Internet Archive - a non-profit digital library founded in 1996 with the impossibly ambitious goal of providing "universal access to all knowledge." And, actually, it already does provide access to the world's largest creative-commons resource of software, videos, books, audio recordings and websites from across the years.

Its collections are available to researchers, historians, scholars and the general public who can upload or download material at no cost. Many musicians permanently archive their live recordings, or find inspiration among its vast visual resources - which include the complete NASA images and the celebrated Prelinger Archive of vintage Public Information films - to name but two.

Best of all in many ways, you can go back in time to view websites and pages from the earliest days of the World Wide Web. Being a non-profit publicly funded organisation you won't see fancy graphics, cutting edge web design design or slick PR campaigns telling you how great it is. But the fact remains, it's a fantastic resource for creative artists of every kind, and one of the nost underrated wonders of the online world.

All of which is why I have no hesitation in making Archive.org my Website of the Week.

Tom Robinson presents BBC Introducing - Fresh on the Net on BBC 6 Music on Sunday and Monday nights.

Read Tom's previous Websites of the Week.

How, when, where and why was the label set up?
DV8 is a community organisation based in London and Brighton which specialises in training projects for young people in creative and media. The label was set up in 2009 as part of their music production course; the young people on the course are responsible for everything.

What's the ethos of the label?
The ethos of the label is to help promote young artists who may otherwise struggle to make music and get it heard. The label gives allows them to take control in everything from producing a track to marketing and releasing it.

What releases are coming out soon on the label?
The 'DV8 Music Collective sampler' is out on the 15th of February and there's a showcase on the 17th of February in Brighton.

What's the favourite office snack at your label?
HobNobs!

And finally... if your label were an animal what would it be and why?
A monkey - because they're energetic and make loads of noise.

Links
http://www.dv8training.com

http://www.myspace.com/dv8musiccollective

Eurosonic happens every year in the pretty university town of Groningen in the Netherlands. It's a few hours by train from Amsterdam, and the first thing that hits when you come out of the station are the millions of bikes everywhere. The town is perfect for a festival of this kind, where around 140 bands play every day.

The festival brings in not only a lot of music fans to check out new and exciting European bands (including ones you'll know like The xx, Marina and the Diamonds and so on), but also a host of festival bookers and music industry types, too.

They come to see who is worth booking for the festival season ahead. As I learned from Robert, one such booker, this is how Franz Ferdinand got their European break. They played their first gig outside of the UK at Eurosonic and then went on to play loads of big festivals over the following summer.

This year, I was only at Eurosonic for one night, which started with checking out Ellie Goulding playing live. She's tipped for big things, of course, and her live gig is very good. She plays guitar and has a backing band of talented musicians who bring her more electronic songs to life. Tunes like Starry Eyed, her next single, sounded massive.

Jaakko & Jay come from Finland and are a punk rockin' drums and guitar duo. Their chugging riffs were awesome live, and they're off on tour with Frank Turner soon. They were probably the best thing I saw at Eurosonic this year.

Representing BBC Radio1 at the festival were Everything Everything. They played the BBC Introducing stage at Reading and Leeds last year and were good, but they were AWESOME in the Netherlands. With a sound of their own and haunting three part harmonies, full on electronica wig outs and an appetite for experimenting without scaring away, they played the huge Grand Theatre and got a massive reaction. They'll be gigging loads again this year and have their debut album planned, so make sure you check them out.


See more photos from Groningen and listen again to live highlights - including tracks from Everything Everything - on Huw's Radio 1 show.

We all then further inflate the hype - either by repeating it - or else by rebelling and telling everyone how rubbish the artist actually is. 9 times out of 10, it turns out the happening band of the moment is, actually, not bad at all. But at the same time, they may not be as mindblowingly, insanely sensational as the tastemakers would lead us to believe.

Disillusion quickly sets in, this year's 'in thing' becomes last year's in thing and perfectly good artists end up dropped and tossed aside through no fault of their own.

All of this is why I like anewbandaday.com, which cheerfully disregards the trends, tipsters and whatever the music mags say on their front covers, to offer an eclectic mix of artists its writers happen to like.

Some of those artists end up rising to wider prominence, most of them don't. But pretty much every act they feature is interesting for its own sake: whether or not you agree with a particular pick, another one will be along 24 hours later.

Best of all, you can recommend any music you like (including your own) directly to the editors. They listen to everything and everything they like ends up on the site. So that's why anewbandaday.com is my new Website of the Week.

Listen to Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music.

See Tom's previous picks for Website of the Week.

Pledge Music is the brainchild of Benji Rodgers from the band Marwood who became tired of playing great shows, selling a good amount of CDs and having no money.

Surely, he thought, there must be a way that people can just make music and get it out to their audience without accumulating huge debts.

Benji's best mate, Rupert, came on board with the technical coding know-how, other friends got the financial and legal angles covered while A&R veteran Malcolm Dunbar joined the team to bring musicbiz acumen to the party. Their aim was to create a funding system for musicians in which nobody loses.

Bands agree their fundiing target with the company, and decide on a range of benefits to offer their fans, according to how much money they're willing to pledge. For five pounds you might get a pre-release download of the album. For five hundred they'd probably come and play the songs live in your living room. All through the making of the record, the investors get exclusive updates, rough mixes and studio footage that no-one else will ever see. And unless the financial target gets reached and the project goes ahead, your credit card doesn't even get charged; everyone walks away as if nothing had happened.

Best of all, from the musician's viewpoint, it's a music company run by music people. At the end of the deal, the artist retains 100% of their publishing and recording rights, which is where it scores over platforms such as Sellaband, SliceThePie and Bandstocks. Pledge Music takes a flat 15% of the capital raised, and also encourages performers to factor a charity donation into their margins.

Practising what he preaches, Benji's own band Marwood has just released its 5th album, donating a quarter of the proceeds to Amnesty International. All of which is why Pledge Music is my new BBC Introducing Website Of The Week.

You can hear Tom's interview with Benji from Pledge Music by listening again to last Sunday's show.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could see an artist's entire tour history, or a list of all the gigs that a legendary venue has ever hosted?

Well, two years ago, Ian Hogarth, Pete Smith, and Michelle You founded Songkick.com with the goal of doing just that: building the world's definitive live music resource.

They've since amassed data on over 1 million gigs, to which concertgoers are now adding posters, photos, videos, setlists and reviews.

Users can share their personal gigography of every gig they've ever been to - and see who else was there. You can track your favorite artists, venues, festivals and concert buddies and be notified when they have upcoming events. If you already use Last FM to track your music listening or iTunes to organsise your collection, you can simply connect Songkick to your library and in a matter of seconds you'll be tracking the live movements of the acts you listen to most.

With most major ticket outlets across the English-speaking world indexed by Songkick, it's pretty comprehensive. But what if gigs by your own band or your favourite artists (past and present) aren't listed? Why, you can add them yourself.

For these reasons, musicians, promoters and gig-goers alike (not to mention obsessive collectors of music memorabilia everywhere) Songkick is my BBC Introducing Website Of The Week.

The xx - xx
(Young Turks)

My favourite album of 2009. Beautiful, minimalistic, deep and extra special beats and vocals stand out a mile from everyone else.

Paul White - The Strange Dreams of Paul White
(One Handed Music)

A new producer who Mary Anne Hobbs has been championing. I heard him for the first time recently and am hooked on his beats!

Golden Silvers - True Romance
(XL)

Their debut album dropped this year, big joyous pop tunes without need for a guitar, made my ears very happy. THey worked hard too, gigging loads and gaining new fans.

Nite Jewel - Good Evening
(Human Ear Music)

Got this in America, promoted by No Pain in Pop records over here, this was etheral, dubsteppy beats and luscious vocals. Not a million miles from The xx, but with more melody and more flow.

Sky Larkin - The Golden Spike
(Wichita)

I went on tour with this brilliant band from Leeds at the start of 2009 (with Pulled Apart by Horses) and then this came out; punchy, lyrically eloquent, big guitar indie.

F*** Buttons - Tarot Sport
(ATPR)

The Bristol band are fast becoming cult heroes thanks to a 'playing to nobody's rules but their own' music-making manifesto, and this album on ATP (live promoters also), took their journey into sonic experimenting even further.

Bombay Bicycle Club - I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose
(Island)

They did a session at the start of 2008 for my show, but the wait for this, their debut album, was well worth it. Contains my favourite single of the year, the excellent Always Like This.

Noah & The Whale - The First Days of Spring
(Young & Lost Club)

It takes guts to make your second album a soundtrack to an arty film full of opera, folk, orchestras, baring your soul. This was very special indeed.

Girls - Album
(Turnstile)

A band from San Francisco who took you by the hand, clutched you into their bosom, and cried when you stopped listening to them. Lush.

So there you have it. That's all from me. Merry Christmas and happy listening!

On Tuesday of this week, BBC Introducing hosted a very special Christmas gig at a tiny London venue to celebrate what has been a fantastic year for new music. You can read all about it in my previous post and check out the photos.

Headlining the gig was a good friend of ours, Florence and the Machine. Our love affair with Florence began back in March 2008 when, unsigned, we took her out to Texas to perform at the BBC Introducing showcase at South by Southwest, where she was introduced by Steve Lamacq. She's gone from strength to strength since then, enjoying phenomenal success this year. So we were extremely proud when she came to the gig on Tuesday night to thank us by performing an acoustic set to a packed out pub. To say it was 'intimate' would be putting it lightly.

The highlight of Flo's set was undoubtedly her hauntingly beautiful and forlorn rendition of Wham!'s Last Christmas. Accompanied by acoustic guitar and harp, Flo's incredible voice had us all transfixed.

It's been proving popular on Radio 1 this week, where Greg James and Huw Stephens have both been playing it, but for those of you that haven't heard it yet, here it is in all its glory. If this doesn't get you feeling festive, nothing will...

Best of 2009 - Download six free MP3s

But wait, there's more! After our end of year gig this week, we've all been in a rather reflective mood at BBC Introducing HQ. It's been a busy old year. Our stage went to all of the summer's major music festivals and we welcomed some incredible new talents through the doors of Maida Vale studios to record sessions for us.

So, as our Christmas present to you, here are six of BBC Introducing's favourite songs from 2009, yours to download for free. Merry Christmas.

• Sound Of Guns - Architects (Live at Radio 1's Big Weekend, May 2009)
• Engine-EarZ Experiment - Introspector (Live at Glastonbury, June 2009)
• Beatbullyz - Skills (Maida Vale session, July 2009)
• Young Fathers - Mainframe Disaster (Live at T In The Park, July 2009)
• Stornoway - End of the Movie (Maida Vale session, July 2009)
• Kid Adrift - Red, Green and Blue (Maida Vale session for Electric Proms, October 2009)
  

Update: the links above have now expired, and the downloads are no longer available. Thanks for downloading!

It was our chance to look back over the past twelve months and celebrate what has been a fantastic year, packed with incredible new bands, memorable performances and some great success stories.

What better place to start than with a completely new band - so new, in fact, that they'd never performed together before. For Bristol's Out Like A Lion, our Christmas party was the first time they'd all played together on stage! The quartet, formed in October 2009 after parting ways with previous bands, uploaded a couple of tracks to us on 18th November. Toby Field from BBC Introducing in Bristol immediately picked up on their obvious talent, forwarding their songs to Huw at Radio 1 and Tom at 6 Music, which led to us offering them a slot on last night's bill. Despite the rather surreal setting for a debut gig, they played a cracking, tight set. Sure we'll be seeing more of them in 2010.

Up next were Hereford siblings, Muchuu, who were the first band to be broadcast on Radio 1 as a result of uploading their songs via our website. Since introducing themselves to us back in March 2009, they've been played by our shows all over the country, supported by their local show on BBC Hereford and Worcester. More recently, the duo recorded a session at Maida Vale for Huw Stephens. We love their quirky blend of synth pop to bits and their festive set last night went down a treat.

Third on the bill were The Temper Trap, who were simply unmissable in 2009. Their track Sweet Disposition seemingly spent months in the Top 40 chart, peaking at no. 6. After recording a session for us in December 2008, fronted by Radio 1's Zane Lowe, the Aussies played at Radio 1's Big Weekend in our tent and later in the year gave us their tips for emerging artists. Last night their acoustic set was warmly received, as was their surprise cover of Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark. Thanks, chaps!

And finally, to recognise her remarkable success in 2009, we welcomed our old friend Florence Welch and her Machine back on to the BBC Introducing stage. There to introduce her was Steve Lamacq, who had inteviewed Flo earlier in the day on 6 Music (you can listen again to the interview on BBC iPlayer until 22 December).

The number of people in the tiny venue seemed to double as Flo took to the stage last night and she didn't disappoint, belting out versions of Dog Days, Cosmic Love and Rabbit Heart as if she were headlining Wembley and finishing with a cover of Wham!'s Last Christmas to send us all home with a festive glow. Lovely.

We'd like to thank everyone who came along last night. And if you're reading this, thanks for your support. We've got a feeling next year is going to be even greater than this one.

Check out more photos in our gig gallery.