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Much has been made of the ‘vinyl revival’ in albums sales over the last five years or so, with old-fashioned records going ever upwards while CD sales and download sales plateau or tumble. The upsurge in the format’s popularity is in part because of Record Store Day.

Record Store Day 2017

Taking place on a Saturday every April, RSD is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2017, after it was founded to help out struggling independent record stores that were struggling to compete with supermarkets and the likes of HMV (now, streaming and downloads).

Continue reading: Our Guide To Record Store Day 2017

Bastille's Chris Wood believes music is an ''important'' in everyone's lives.

The band's 31-year-old drummer has urged schools to put more emphasis on teaching music in schools because he thinks it plays a vital part in people's lives; whether a song can be a soundtrack for a momentous occasion or as a way to express one's feelings.

Speaking to the Plymouth Herald, he said: ''I'm obviously coming a very biased angle in that I pursued a career in music but I feel that the importance of creative arts cannot be underestimated.

Continue reading: Bastille's Chris Wood Believes Music Is 'important' In Everyone's Lives

British group Bastille have expressed their dismay over Britain choosing to leave the EU following yesterday’s referendum. The five piece even changed the lyrics to their hit ‘Pompeii’ this morning, during an appearance on BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge.

Dan Smith has spoken of his shock over the EU referendum.

When performing ‘Pompeii’ frontman Dan Smith sang: “And the pound kept tumbling down on the weekend that we love.” Yesterday, ahead of the referendum vote, the band had spoken out in support of the remain campaign.

Continue reading: "The Pound Kept Tumbling Down" Bastille Change Lyrics After Referendum Result

So um, the Grammys are about to get really interesting this year – mostly because there are so many fresh faces on the nominees list. From Bastille to Sam Smith, you could call this the year of the young and angsty up-and-comers.

The lads of Bastille are staying humble and supporting their fellow artists tonight.

Debutants Bastille, who are nominated in the Best New Artist category, are planning to spend the night ““awkwardly tripping down the red carpet and pulling our shirt collars,” per their interview with MTV. They certainly have a reason to be nervous, as the category also includes some of the biggest successes of 2014 - Iggy Azalea, Sam Smith, Brandy Clark and Haim.

Continue reading: Grammy Newcommers Bastille Preparing For A Surreal Night

Reading & Leeds Festival goers will be happy to hear the line up for this year has been released, and it is already looking like an incredible weekend for music enthusiasts. The bank holiday weekend of 28th-30th August 2015 will be hosting one of the UK's biggest music festivals. Across the weekend, bands are being plucked up to offer one of the best line-ups for the festival yet. Mumford And Sons will be headlining alongside Metallica this year, four years after their last performance at the festival. They will be joined by Royal Blood, Bastille, Catfish And The Bottlemen, Hannah Wants, Rebel Sound ft. Chase & Status, Rage, David Rodigan and Shy FX, Years & Years, Wolf Alice, and plenty more yet to be announced.

Mumford and Sons are due to perform at 2015's Reading and Leeds festivals

Mumford and Sons are proving to be a great choice for headline act this year. The bands last performance at Reading & Leeds was in 2010, where they played on the NME/ BBC Radio 1 stage. This will be their first live performance in two years, and with their stage upgraded to the Main stage, they are showing themselves to be a very worthy choice for headline act. 

Continue reading: Reading & Leeds Festival 2015 Line-Up Add Further Names To Line-up

Bastille’s breakout success entitles them to their pick of the bunch. With such a stellar rep, they can attract some of the world’s top producers to their next project. But, as they did with their hugely popular debut album, ‘Bad Blood’, the band will look to work with Mark Crew again.

Dan Smith of Bastille at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend at Glasgow Green

“I think it's really important to us that we do it all ourselves. I think that's what makes our music a bit different from other people's. We've always been a tight-knit group,” singer Dan Smith told Digital Spy at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Glasgow. The band has revealed that they’d like to release a follow up album this year, but their label has – in a rare move – assured them there’s no need to rush anything.

Continue reading: Bastille Won't Be Enlisting Any "Big Producers", Opting To Go It Alone

Alabama's sun-soaked, sold-out Hangout Music Fest begins officially today (May 16th 2014) following yesterday's kick-off party - and there's almost too much fun to take in.

Set against the glorious backdrop of Gulf Shores' pure white beaches, this festival truly is the place to 'hang out' this weekend with top headliners The Black Keys, The Killers, Outkast and Jack Johnson leading the talent-studded bill. Acts such as Jack Antonoff's latest project Bleachers, CLASSIXX and Bonobo's DJ set went down a storm at the Discover Great Thursday Kickoff Party, but don't worry if you missed it because things are getting even better over the rest of the weekend.

Headliners The Black Keys open the festival today

Continue reading: Experience Sun, Sand And Sensational Sounds At Hangout Festival 2014

Billed as 'a music and food festival', Sweetlife 2014 is set to offer the best of both with their single day event this weekend (May 10th 2014) at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.

With the grand setting of masses of surrounding forestland, Sweetlife has developed into a much-loved annual party since its inception in 2010 when it was simply a small event held outside the Sweetgreen food destination in Dupont, Washington DC. And yet, it has maintained its solid ethics of green living and healthy eating, enforcing this with offers of local produce and green set-ups such as solar powered stages, composting waste disposal and recycling units. To make it even better, all proceeds from the event go to a very worthy charitable cause!

Continue reading: Lana Del Rey And Foster The People Headline Sweetlife 2014 This Weekend!

Bastille may have walked away with the BRIT Award for Best British Breakthrough Act, but were they the most deserving winners of the gong? Their 2013 debut album ‘Bad Blood’ did reach number one in the UK music chart, but so did Eughan Quigg’s self-titled album in 2009. We’re definitely joking here, Bastille is in no way comparable to Eughan (no disrespect, Eughan), but number ones have been misleading indicators of quality music in the past!

Bastille brought home the BRIT at last Wednesday's awards

Bastille have produced some catchy and very popular tracks over the past couple of years and are certainly owed some recognition for this. They’re talented musicians who we envisage having the long lifeline of super band, Arctic Monkeys, especially since ‘Bad Blood’ has returned to the number one spot since their BRIT win. The problem is the deflated feeling we’ve had since they bagged the award. Not because Bastille didn‘t deserve to win, but because there was another act in the running who really blew us away in 2013.

Continue reading: The Act That Should Have Won A BRIT Award, London Grammar

All set for the BRIT Awards this evening? Indeed, Britain's biggest night of music awards will take place today and we're feeling pretty excited for the ceremony, which is set to be as spectacular as ever. Of course, if it was purely based on sales, most of the awards would go to One Direction, who have sold 3.19 million albums in the past year. Luckily that's not the case and the awards look set to be handed out to a diverse range of acts who've made their mark on music this year.

Nominated 'International Female Solo Artist' Will Be Bringing Her Pop Hits To Tonight's Ceremony.

This year's musical entertainment will be provided by Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, Ellie Goulding Arctic Monkeys, Rudimental, Bruno Mars, Bastille, and Lorde but a rumour has arisen that Prince may make a surprise performance with his band, 3rdEyeGirl. The funk singer has been delighting Londoners with surprise gigs over the past week so it's highly plausible that he'll make the BRIT Awards his final London date.

Continue reading: Tonight's BRIT Awards Preview: Who's Performing, Who's Up For A Prize?

The nominees have been announced for this year's Brit Awards, which will be presented live in a ceremony on ITV on the 19th February. The annual awards celebrate the year's biggest British music stars, in a competition that is as hotly contested as ever after a thrilling year in music.

Disclosure Could Be About To Get A Lot More Famous With Four Potential Brit Awards Headed Their Way.

Bastille and Disclosure have emerged as the early front-runners after netting four nominations apiece and will go head-to-head in the Mastercard British Album of the Year, British Breakthrough Act, British Single and British Group categories. Though both groups have enjoyed rocketing to success this year, Disclosure and their album Settle may have the edge due to having been also nominated for last year's Mercury Music Prize.

Continue reading: Brit Awards 2014 Nominations: Disclosure, Bastille, Rudimental Emerge On Top

Leeds Festival 2013 may not have brought with it the best weather of the year, with torrential downpours and heavy flooding putting a damper (pardon the pun) on everyone's camping weekend, but the line-up was enough to put a smile on everyone's mud spattered face!

Green Day Headline Leeds Festival 2013

Biffy Clyro drew in a rapturous audience on the Friday and Green Day had a smaller but dedicated audience on Saturday, but that was nothing compared to Eminem's fantastic closing performance which drew the biggest audience of the whole weekend. Other bands had a few surprises up their sleeves, with Fall Out Boy managing to get Foxes up on stage to perform their collaborative track 'Just One Yesterday' (Pete Wentz' favourite song from their new album) and The Lumineers taking crowd participation to a new level by playing in the middle of their audience.

Continue reading: Leeds Festival 2013 Flooding Fails To Bring The Rapturous Crowd Down

As the annual South by Southwest festival heats up over there in Austin, Texas, we’ve cast a jealous eye over the line-up and picked out five of some of the bigger names that you really should start queuing nice and early for and thrown in five hype bands for you, too, so you can get all hip with your friends, upon your return and start laying down all those “saw them first lines,” when they blow up next year.

First up, the acts that have already broken, that you really need to check out, or at least pretend that you did, if you were stuck in that queue for BBQ wings…

1. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – their ‘Thrift Shop’ song really blew up, especially online, where they challenged Carly Rae Jepsen’s chart record for ‘Call Me Maybe.’ No one can predict whether or not Macklemore’s going to be a one hit wonder or whether he’s got more up his sleeve, he’s known for putting on a good show, and all six of their shows are likely to be rammed.

Continue reading: SXSW Movers And Shakers: The Biggest Names And Best New Acts At South By Southwest 2013

A Week in Video... Wakefield’s indie rockers The Cribs release ‘Leather Jacket Love Song,’ a nostalgic look back at their last decade of existence as a band. The video inter-splices archive footage of one of the brothers’ early gigs at Ossett Town Hall in Yorkshire, with the Cribs circa 2013 observing their younger selves. The Cribs’ sounds hasn’t altered a great deal over time, but their popularity seems to show no signs of wavering; their commitment to their DIY roots remains strong and even with Ryan breaking out with his new band Exclamation Pony, we reckon there’s a few years left in The Cribs yet.

Palma Violets have been causing a stir, with their accessible, psych-tinged garage rock. The video for ‘Step Up For The Cool Cats’ is a vaguely trippy, home-video style shoot; footage of the band playing is mixed with footage of them driving around in a car together, looking like it’s being played back on an old TV set. The band have gained a lot of attention since playing recent slots with London based Savages. It looks like 2013 could well be their year.

Continue reading: A Week In Music - The Cribs Look Back Over A Decade, Palma Violets Cause A Stir, Adam Ant's Awkward Return, Yeah Yeah Yeahs Hitting The Road