by Mark Mayne
July 16, 2001

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The Mean Fiddler music firm has announced plans to start a digital TV channel within two years and float on the stock market – the latter move was announced in January.

The float, via a reverse takeover of unlisted parent company Mean Fiddler Holdings will ‘improve bargaining power with artists and record companies, and help secure important content for broadcast via digital media,’ according to a statement issued by the company.

Mean Fiddler, born from a single club in Harlesden, north London in 1982, hopes to extend its current web-streamed offerings, which encompasses a range of live event broadcasts to Network of the World (NOW) Asia, by the development of the digital channel. The combination of these will apparently allow the company to provide ‘an integrated offering to artists and labels by allowing promotion via the venues, music festivals and digital media being developed by the company’.

‘The directors believe that interactive TV represents the logical conclusion to the convergence of technologies and the future for digital broadcasts,’ the statement continued. Meanfiddler.com claims to have gained over 5m page impressions since its launch in May 2000.

The site currently provides online ticket sales for all of Mean Fiddler’s events and venues, which span the Reading Festival, Subterania, the Jazz Café and Homelands.