“NME” Attempts To Establish Its Brand In US By Piggybacking Off Other Brands

noah | March 25, 2008 11:30 am
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The NME–which has taken to branding itself as “The World’s Fastest Music News Service,” which I guess is their way of sidestepping allegations about its accuracy–will hold the American version of its Shockwaves Awards on April 23 in Los Angeles, and you aren’t invited. But don’t worry! You can stream the whole thing on MySpace, thanks to one of those partnership deals that press releases trumpet as “exclusive” and jaded eyes read as “last-ditch attempts to make people on this side of the pond care about a brand that doesn’t really mean much to them unless they’re really into overly breathless prose and/or Billy Childish.”

And there are more:

• Best Video is sponsored by Heavy.com–“one of the web’s leading consumer video companies and the leader for 18-34 year old males,” which means I guess that you can expect to see lots of boobs in the nominees;

• Best New American Alternative/Indie Band is sponsored by Yahoo! Music; and

• American Alternative/Indie Album of the Year is sponsored by Entertainment Weekly‘s Web site, because there’s no better way to establish your brand in a new country than to hitch it to that of a competitor that’s had deathwatch rumors swirling around it for the better part of the past few years.

Nominations are open now, although for some reason a) the NME wants your street address to let you through to registration and b) you have to click through 18 pages in order to nominate an entire slate. So I guess this is going to be another awards show whose nominees are decided by hapless interns working in service of their image-conscious bosses, right?

Earlier: NME To Bring Its Incessant Arctic Monkeys Longing To The US

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