Bastille have announced that their new single ‘Laura Palmer’ will be released on June 3. Taken from their chart-topping debut album ‘Bad Blood’, ‘Laura Palmer’ is the follow up to the number two chart smash, ‘Pompeii’, one of the UK’s biggest selling singles of the year.

Influenced by David Lynch’s seminal TV Series ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Laura Palmer’ is an epic, cinematic pop song laden with haunting strings, soaring vocals and pulsating beats. The band’s number 1 album, ‘Bad Blood’ is currently in its sixth week in the UK Top 10 album charts and reached gold-status (100,000 sales) within the first two weeks of release. Previous single, ‘Pompeii’ is still in the UK top five after seven weeks.

Watch the video for ‘Laura Palmer’ right here:

2013 has certainly got off to a great start for David Guetta. With ‘Titanium’ having recently hit 1 million singles sold in the UK and new single ‘Play Hard’ set for release next month, his latest achievement is the announcement that he has now surpassed the landmark number of 40 million fans on Facebook.

This milestone places him amongst the most popular people on Facebook and at number 17 in the highest ranked musicians on the social network, alongside over 8 million fans on Twitter. As the highest-ranking DJ in the list, this is yet another breakthrough for both Guetta and electronic music as its audience continues to grow daily. This announcement comes after Guetta recently won a VEVO certified award for reaching over 100 million views on 6 of his videos, with over 1 billion views of his videos in total on VEVO, making him the first DJ to be VEVO Certified.

To celebrate this milestone and show his gratitude to each of his 40 millions fans that have shown their support for him, David Guetta is giving away a free download of R3hab’s remix of ‘Play Hard’. Dutch DJ and producer R3hab has quickly asserted himself as one of the most exciting talents in dance music and his remix has quickly proved a fan favourite, racking up over 150k plays on soundcloud within a week of a short preview going live.

Get ‘Play Hard’ feat. Ne-Yo & Akon (R3hab Remix) here: http://smarturl.it/40Million

Universal Music UK chairman & CEO David Joseph has today announced the launch of Virgin EMI Records – a creative powerhouse bringing together the newly reinvigorated Virgin Records and its Universal Music sister company Mercury Records.

Virgin EMI Records will be an immediate contender for the UK’s number one label, launching with a roster which extends from Emeli Sandé, the biggest-selling artist of last year, to Jake Bugg, the biggest breakthrough artist of 2013 so far, alongside international superstars Sir Elton John, Rihanna, Kanye West, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.

Reaffirming its place as one of the most illustrious and diverse labels in the history of British music, Virgin has already been building on the phenomenal success of Emeli Sandé – last week it celebrated a number one debut album with south Londoners Bastille. The label’s A&R team has releases lined up this year from widely-tipped Scottish trio Chvrches as well as established names Laura Marling and Empire Of The Sun from a roster which also includes Professor Green and Swedish House Mafia.

The addition of the executives and artists currently working under the Mercury banner means Virgin EMI Records will be home to international repertoire from the world-beating Island Def Jam label as well as Virgin US, next to an extensive and varied domestic roster featuring the UK-signed Arcade Fire alongside Chase & Status.  The new set-up also means Virgin, which became part of Universal Music following UMG’s acquisition of EMI last year, will return to being a full-service record company for the first time since its heyday.

Virgin EMI Records will operate two distinct A&R and marketing streams – Virgin and EMI, a move which secures the future of the historic EMI name in the UK.

Read the announcement in full here

Congratulations to Bastille for clinching the UK Official Albums Chart Number 1 with debut album ‘Bad Blood’, including the highest digital share sales for a week one number one album of all time! The band’s new single, Pompeii stormed in to the UK top 40 singles chart last week charting at number 3 and holds this week.

Dan Smith and his band have taken a short break from their current UK tour to play a series of dates at SXSW. They return to the UK next week to continue the tour which includes two sold out shows at Shepherds Bush Empire. In May the band headline the Great Escape Festival and will feature at most of the summer festivals including another headline slot at Blissfields in July.

As the creative force behind Bastille, much of Dan’s childhood was spent dreaming of being a film editor, a writer or a journalist, any profession in which he could tell a story. Film was an early obsession of Smith’s; a precocious love of horror movies led to an appreciation of Dario Argento and esoteric European cinema. Later, he would be swept into Mulholland Drive and the work of David Lynch, all of which have influenced his music. His song Laura Palmer uses the story of Twin Peaks’ mysterious murder victim, and for a while he even wore his hair in an Eraserhead cut.

In a weird way, thanks to Bastille, Smith is doing exactly what he always intended: not only is he now making films for his songs (and reluctantly appearing in them too; the video for Pompeii being his vision of “the novel ‘I am Legend’ if it were shot by the director of ‘Drive’”), most of all he’s telling stories.

Congratulations to JoyTunes who were the winners of the latest EMI Innovation Challenge. The company, which makes applications to aid musical instrument learning with a strong gaming slant, impressed the panel of judges and the audience at EMI’s London headquarters with their growing business based around apps for piano and recorder and their plans for future expansion.

Joytunes was formed in 2010 to transform the way people learn and practice music and has so far released two apps – Piano Dust Buster and Recorder Master which use gaming to teach musical skills either through a real or virtual instrument. To date Piano Dust Buster has been downloaded more than a million times with its users currently playing more than 800,000 songs a week.

The latest EMI Innovation Challenge was held in London on March 5 in assocation with UK-based music business consultancy Music Ally.

Presenting the company to the latest EMI Innovation Challenge, co-founder, Music Director and principal oboist in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra Yigal Kaminka said: “This is just the beginning. We will very soon be expanding to more audiences and more instruments.”

Pictured left to right: Neil Tinegate – EMI VP Digital Projects, Yigal Kaminka – Joytunes co-founder and Musical Director, Bertrand Bodson – EMI EVP Global Digital, Tahir Basheer – partner in the Interactive and Digital Media Groups, Sheridans (event sponors), Paul Brindley – co-founder and CEO, Music Ally

Congratulations guys! Here’s JoyTunes themsevles explaining a bit more about how they work:

Five of EMI Music’s top Scandanavian artists – Susanne Sundfør, Morten Abel, Alina Devecerski, Christopher and Magnus Uggla – have today launched new global smartphone apps in partnership with Spotify and social music service, Mobile Backstage.

Built on the Mobile Backstage platform, the five apps offer fans an innovative listening experience based around fan community and creating deeper connections between the artist and their fans around the world.  By utilising Spotify’s ‘Libspotify’ API  - which allows developers to access and build Spotify’s music streaming services into apps – the new fan apps allow users to both play music in an interactive context  and stream full singles and albums (Spotify premium users only, since it requires an account for mobile)  without leaving the app environment, creating a seamless user experience with unparalleled music access.

The fan app features include:

• Stream albums and songs from Spotify within the app ecosystem (if Spotify premium user)
• Social features that allow fans to interact with each other and the artist to share their experiences
• Send a private message to an artist/band member via text, audio or video message
• Artist/band profiles
• Access and rate artist/bands’ posts including images, video clips and text
• Integrated content from Twitter and Facebook
• Access gig listings and buy tickets
• iTunes Music Store integration

The apps, which are now available to download from iTunes app store, will give fans access to the full audio catalogue of each specific artist users simply click, play and listen while still being able to access the other feature of the app.

Says Paul Sonkamble, Head of Innovation & Insight, EMI Music Nordic: “We have specifically collaborated with five artists whose fans value being able to consume music portably and want to feel closer and more connected with the artist through social media experiences. By partnering with Mobile Backstage and Spotify, two cutting edge digital innovators, we have created five apps that enable artists to reach and interact with their fans like never before, whilst providing fans with a plethora of ways to connect with the fan community and immerse themselves in their favourite artists’ music.”

Download the apps here:

Alina Devecerski: Link to App Store

Christopher:  Link to App Store

Magnus Uggla:  Link to App Store

Morten Abel: Link to App Store

Susanne Sundfør: Link to App Store

Congratulations to Emeli Sandé, Coldplay, Richard Hawley, Bat For Lashes and Damon Albarn for their nominations for this year’s Brit Awards!

Emeli leads the nominations overall with three individual nods for Best Female, Best Album and Best Single for ‘Next To Me’. Emeli’s collaboration with Labrinth, ‘Beneath Your Beautiful’, is also up for the Best Single award.

Coldplay have two nominations – British Single for ‘Princess of China’ with Rihanna, and British Live Act, Richard Hawley is up for British Male and Bat For Lashes for British Female. Damon Albarn is nominated in the British Producer category.

This year’s Brit Awards will be held at the O2 Arena in London on February 20.

Emeli Sandé and Virgin Records are pleased to announce the release of ‘Live At The Royal Albert Hall’, a live DVD and CD out on the 18th February.

The Scottish singer-songwriter’s new DVD collection includes performances of all of her hit singles so far including ‘Daddy’, ‘My Kind Of Love’, ‘Clown’, ‘Read All About It Pt. III’, ‘Heaven’, ‘Beneath Your Beautiful’ and ‘Next To Me’.

The live concert spectacular, directed by Paul Dugdale – whose previous work includes Coldplay Live 2012 – features guest performances from Labrinth and Professor Green

The release of ‘Live At The Royal Albert Hall’ comes fresh from Emeli’s debut album ‘Our Version Of Events’ being named the top-selling UK record of 2012. Emeli is also the first solo artist to notch up an unbroken run of 47 weeks inside the Official Albums Chart Top 10 with a debut album from release, and only the second act in history to achieve such a feat behind The Beatles, who scored 62 consecutive weeks in the Top 10 with their 1963 debut ‘Please Please Me’.

‘Our Version Of Events’ has been certified five times platinum and sold over 1.5 million copies in the UK since its release in February 2012.

For someone yet to release his first album, Dan Smith, the creative force behind Bastille, has already had a good taste of fame: with the band he’s sold out London’s 1,500 capacity KOKO, sold out two UK tours and headline festivals. More sold out UK tour kicks off next month and now Smith is ready to reveal his debut album, ‘Bad Blood’, out on March 4 through Virgin Records.

The album plays to Smith’s long term love of film. The aim of ‘Bad Blood’ he says, was to: “Approach each song differently. I wanted each to be its own story with its own atmosphere which brings in different sounds and elements of production, incorporating aspects of the different genres and styles that I love; Hip hop, indie, pop and folk. Film soundtracks can be broad and varied but tied together by the film itself – and I hope the album will be something like that, but held together by my voice and my songwriting, each song a scene or part of a bigger picture.”

Bastille release their new single ‘Pompeii’ on February 25. Ahead of that, Smith and the rest of the band – bassist Will Farquarson, keyboard player Kyle Simmons and drummer Chris ‘Woody’ Wood – will be headlining Two Door Cinema Club on their upcoming tour starting January 24 in Newcastle before kicking off their own headline dates in Liverpool on February 28 and then around the UK throughout March.

Until then here’s a reminder of their earlier single ‘Overjoyed’:

With Love From EMI To You – check out these great seasonal musical e-cards from EMI: http://smarturl.it/EMIECard