Rhythm of London is a series of music events designed to engage 16-25 year old Londoners with music.

First up is a busking competition – read on for details how to enter…

Are you a musician and or singer between 16 and 25? Would you like to win a chance to perform on a highly sought after busking pitch on the London Underground? Well courtesy of Rhythm of London and Transport for London, you can do just that.

Transport for London has given special permission for Rhythm of London to offer busking sites across the Underground network on Saturday 11 July. This is a unique opportunity to bring your music to the thousands of people who use the tube every day and be part of the live music scene in London.

Some 100 young buskers will win 20-minute slot on a prime performance pitch. That’s not all, the top ten buskers, as voted for by the public and the Rhythm of London judging panel, will have an opportunity to busk for prizes including a year’s licence to perform as part of London’s Underground Busking Scheme, a brand new Epiphone acoustic guitar - courtesy of Gibson Guitars and a guitar signed and donated by Sting

To take part, you need to complete the application form, confirming you have read and accepted the T&Cs by ticking the box, and email a 30 seconds (max) clip of you/ your band playing to ROLauditions@london.gov.uk. The file size should be no larger than 5MB.

A panel of Rhythm of London judges will judge your clip and the top 100 performers will be selected to perform on Saturday 11 July 2009 as part of the Rhythm of London festival.

Once your audition has been successfully sent, keep an eye out on the ROL website, where successful applicants will be announced and details of your ‘busking gig’ will be emailed to you. If you win the opportunity to perform – there will be a chance for the public to view and vote on your live performances on the Underground via the Rhythm of London website.

We welcome any style and any genre! There is no restriction to the type of music that can be played either in your audition or at your Rhythm of London busking pitch should you be successful.

Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of London’s thriving live music scene! Celebrate and give your sound!

Deadline for submitting your audition is 5pm on 30th June.

Blyk’s London members can engage with Rhythm of London via exclusive music based SMS dialogues, ringtones, wallpapers and a dedicated WAP site. Keep your phones on for more info…

YOU NEED TO KNOW!

Please note: You will not be able to submit an entry, unless you have read and accepted the full terms and conditions of entry. Here are a few key points:

* Do not include material that might be deemed offensive in your audition clip.
* You are not permitted to busk for money during Rhythm of London.
* Buskers and their instruments must fit on an official London Underground pitch (approx semi-circle w 3m x d 1m).
* There is no mains power supply and any equipment must be operated by dry batteries.

Earlier this month, you shared your 2009 resolutions with us – thank you! We were amazed with the dedication to kicking bad habits, making new starts, shedding the post-holiday pounds, appreciating the family… now the decorations are long gone and longest month of the year is nearly over, are you sticking to your guns? We hope so!

To keep you going, have a look at what other members are doing to make the most of 2009.

You are working from the general:
• Get ontop of my life!

To the specific!
• Going To Try And Resist Haribo x James in Doncaster x
• Learn a language, learn a chat up line from it, try to pull and give blood! Ha!
• Less time on guitar hero and more time with family
• i am going to do more charity work and volunteer my next 26 weekends to a kids workshop who also help with reading and writing difficulties.
• Help even more people then 2008 with what ever is wrong with them e.g helping then get through family problems etc.
• Give up cheese, chocolate and bread… Get slim people! X
• 2 try n b mre eco freindly by mking simple changes such as recycling waste
• Achieve a maximum weight lifting rep of 140kg
• 2 donate blood as i hav a rare blood type
• Being able to wake up a year from now and think to myself: im glad i did all that in 09. My resolution is to live without fear,restrictions and doing what i know i can achieve.
• For 2009 i want to remember that life is short so im going to break rules, forgive quickly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes me smile
• Eat less chocolate
• Eat more chocolate!

A lot of you gave Blyk an ego boost:
• To save all the money i used to spend on texts with my previous network before blyk and use it to buy me my first driving lessons! I can’t wait! Thanks blyk!
• To always keep my fone on 2 keep my refill date
• to succeed in getting something posted on the blyk blog.

Well, we’re pleased we can get you published and save you some money for bigger things!

Last but definitely not least… it’s Colin in Poole:
• Ive thought long and hard about my new year resolution and Ive decided to go with 1024×768. Colin in poole .

Good luck with sticking to your resolutions,

Desi.

During my time spent in the Blyk office today, two things have surprised me. Firstly, the alarming rate at which the little remaining desk space I have is being consumed by mugs upon mugs of ginger tea, and secondly, how many people have seen Step Up 2.

I’m not a dance movie person myself. I’ve never seen Step Up 1, or Save The Last Dance, Shall We Dance, Dirty Dancing or Happy Feet. Ok, I have seen Happy Feet, but that has penguins. No, I’m not a dance movie person but I always thought that, within the genre, Step Up is the kid that always gets picked last. But reading through the torrent of eager Step Up 2 reviews you lot sent in, one thing has become perfectly clear – I’m an idiot who knows embarrassingly little about new films for someone with a film degree.

However, I must admit all this Step Up 2 talk has been a bit of a MacGuffin, used solely to aid my safe navigation to this third paragraph. It’s been emotional. However, our winner this time is not a Step Up 2 review, although one about a bear eating his friends came very close but lost out for not really having anything to do with the film.

Our winner is concerned with the altogether different kettle of fish that is 10,000 BC, a film that had a surprisingly muted release for one of Roland Emmerich’s CGI-bonanzas. Still, plenty of you lot scampered to the cinema to soak up its woolly-mammoth sized charms. And one of you found enough to hate in its furry embrace to win our competition and share your fury with the whole of Blyk. Keep an eye on your Blyk phone next week to find out who…

A big thanks to all those members who have taken the time to share their feedback on all things Blyk. We take all your comments and ideas really seriously and it’s your feedback that will help Blyk continue to develop and improve. So, whatever you want to say, share it with us on the Blyk Forum or fill out our online Feedback Form.

Here’s an overview of some of things we’ve done already in response to your feedback:

We’ve had lots of comments about the tags at the end of text messages. Some of you think they’re a great idea - some of you don’t. So, Blyk is working hard to find a compromise…

We now only tag 50% of your messages and we’ve made them shorter so they don’t get in the way as much. We’re also looking at ways that we can reduce the number of tags sent on any given day. So, for example, you might only get one tag in any text conversation - no matter how many messages are sent.

Lots of you told us you want Blyk to add Maestro to the list of debit and credit cards that we accept for online top-up. Well, we were listening and are happy to say that Blyk will be able to accept the Maestro card soon. We’ll update you again when we know the specific date when you can use Maestro cards.

Blyk is working hard behind the scenes to make it easier for you to find the nearest shop that you can buy top-up vouchers by designing a web-based store locator. Just put in your postcode and we’ll tell you where the nearest shop is. Simple. We’re planning to launch this service in April so keep checking back on this blog for updates. Please note that you can now purchase Blyk top-up vouchers at all Post Office shops in the UK.

For all your Member Care enquiries, start with the Blyk Manual and if you can’t find what you’re looking for send us an email or give us a call on 147 from your Blyk phone or 0845 702 1021 from any other network.

Thanks again, Nicola

Blyk wants to be as honest and open as possible with you. The Blyk forum was set up to provide a space for everyone to talk about their experience on Blyk, and share their comments, praise and criticism and any other queries. To complement this, Blyk is pleased to launch the Blyk blog. On this blog you’ll find posts written by the people behind Blyk, to keep you up-to-date on everything involved in the running of your network; from details of new offers and schemes, to important technological developments, mobile industry trends and much more. It’ll also make sure that you’re fully informed and understand exactly what’s the problem anytime something doesn’t quite work how it should. And as always, any comments you have are greatly appreciated.

Blyk would like to apologise to anyone who experience difficulty in sending messages last Thursday. This was due to an unavoidable technical fault, and Blyk is currently working hard to help ensure that this problem won’t happen again.