Brewers filling the innovation gap left by the music industry

We're past having to point out that the music labels aren't going to be at the forefront of creating a business model for music distribution that's relevant in a digital world. Interestingly, however, the latest people looking to fill that gap are Tennents lager, who have just launched The Tennent's Mutual. From the press release:

"Tennent’s will empower and enable music fans to shape the live music landscape with a start-up fund of £150,000. Fans will be allowed the unique power to decide democratically and collectively exactly how this money is invested, ultimately creating The Tennent’s Mutual live programme, which will begin in October / November 2008. Founding members will select artists, debate locations for gigs and call the shots on ticket prices by interacting as a community and voting for their preferences online – ultimately creating new and affordable access to live music in Scotland."

So there's an initial pot of £150k seed money, and bands that can drum up popular support can get funding from it to play.

There's two interesting things here. The first is a theme I've returned to again and again: that increasingly what in media we like to think of as "advertisers" are just getting on with building their own brands by creating their own media solutions. For the second, I turn to Craig McGill who originally pointed this out to me:

"The interesting thing will come from seeing how they stop people hijacking the site and/or the cash."

Online votes are notoriously hard to prevent from descending into farce. See, if you haven't already, what happened to the New York Mets when they put their new anthem out to an online vote. I think the question can probably be put as specifically as this - how is Tennent's going to prevent voters handing the whole £150k over to Rick Astley for singing Never Gonna Give You Up?