"The Blog Sound Poll was first published in 2011. The concept of the poll wasn’t to criticise the established BBC Sound of list, but simply an experiment to see if UK music bloggers could come up with its own list of emerging artists that was more representative of their community and give the artists that were nominated some extra publicity. Indeed the idea was to compliment the BBC list in many ways by providing an alternative to compare and contrast.
Last year’s final long list provided some interesting alternatives to the BBC list; most notably it included Alt-J, this year’s Mercury Prize winners, who didn’t feature on the BBC list at all.
The Blog Sound of 2013 poll has expanded with 49 UK blogs nominating their 5 favourite emerging artists. Just over 170 acts received at least 1 vote. The winning act received votes from around 25% of all bloggers.
The poll was organised by Robin Seamer (Breaking More Waves) and Andy Von Pip (The Von Pip Express). Each blog was allowed to vote for five acts and the diversity of the nominations was staggering. Based on the evidence of the spread of votes anyone that says that music bloggers are sheep and are all writing about the same artists has got it wrong. However, the results of the poll show that certain artists do have a lot of support and love from a significant portion of UK bloggers and those artists make up the Blog Sound of 2013 list,”.
So here's the results! (We'll be revealing the top 5 and winner of the Blog Sound of 2013 on January 3rd, and we'll also let you know who Music Liberation picked in our customary Future Sounds feature, suffice to say that one of our picks has made the long-list, you can probably guess who!)
AlunaGeorge - Infectious R&B influenced pop from London
Curxes - Dark industrial-pop electronic duo from Brighton and Portsmouth
Chvrches – Scottish electro pop trio formed from a variety of other bands
Daughter – Minimal / ambient sounding folk
Haim – Classic rock from LA with pop sensibilities
Laura Mvula – Jazz / soul singer hailing from Birmingham
MØ – Hip soulful female vocal electronic pop from Denmark
Palma Violets – Raw and energetic indie rock band
Pins – Edgily cool and raucous all female indie band from Manchester
Randolph’s Leap – Glasgow based indie folk pop with a twist of brass
Rhye – Smooth and blissful pop duo
Savages – Intense post-punk with female vocals
Seasfire – Modern rock band from Bristol who mix electronic beats with guitars
The Neighbourhood – Atmospheric Californian 5 piece rock / pop band
Tom Odell – Piano based singer songwriter originally from Chichester
The 49 blogs who voted in the poll are:-
AlunaGeorge – Your Drums, Your Love Curxes – Spectre Chvrches – The Mother We Share Daughter – Medicine Haim – Don’t Save Me Laura Mvula – She MØ – Pilgrim Palma Violets – Best of Friends Pins – Shoot You Randolph’s Leap – Hermit Rhye – The Fall Savages – Flying To Berlin Seasfire – We Will Wake The Neighbourhood – Let It Go Tom Odell – Another Love
