Welcome to Now Playing @6Music

Hello and welcome to the shiny new Now Playing @6Music blog – the hub for the show which will air between 7-9pm on Friday evenings. Presented by Tom Robinson, and with a production team of Rowan, Phil and Will, it is an entirely interactive and digital show which will reflect the most talked about tracks online, what is creating the most hype on blogs and most importantly invite you, the 6Music audience, to contribute to debate and directly mould the playlist for the remaining 166-hours of the week.

Each week there will be a themed playlist based on a story which has sent bloggers into overdrive – be it the rejuvenation of Gallagher sibling love, the White Stripes announcing a 75-date world tour or the unveiling of Daft Punk’s new ukulele based folk-funk project. We will suggest a starting point and then leave the rest to you to submit the remaining tracks via social media, playlisting websites, e-mail or any other way you want to get your message across to us.

As well as this, we will hijack Twitter throughout the show, and play tracks which people are listening to across the world by using #nowplaying, we will talk to some of the best and most influential bloggers across cyberspace and the artists who are creating more buzz than a swarm of bees trapped in a shoe box after finding a shipment of Ecuadorian coffee.

TOM ROBINSON - "Without knowing it, we had a small foretaste of Now Playing last August when 6Music staged the Listener Takeover. We went into the show that day with only a skeleton playlist, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed buzzing with listeners. 

The next 120 minutes were both hair-raising and exhilarating as we tore up the playlist and simply went with the flow. The listeners quickly picked up the ball and ran with it, chatting, telling stories and cracking jokes. Meanwhile the production team were frantically downloading tracks and getting them on air as listeners were still discussing them. I hardly knew from moment to moment what record we'd be playing next.

Most of all I loved being able to actively respond to the listeners - not just on mic - but publicly online while records were playing, where everybody could see and join in. It was the most exhausting radio show I'd ever done, but also the most fun. And the question everyone was asking at the end of the show - both online and in the studio - was "why can't it be like this every Friday?"



Well, now it can. Not just for the two hours we're on air every Friday but hopefully as a conversation about music all through the week. It's a new show, a new team and pretty much uncharted territory: so nothing's carved in stone.

We're not just open to new ideas from the wider music community, we're actively eager to explore them. As the only station in broadcasting history to have been saved by its listeners, 6Music has a unique relationship with its audience.

This show is about you and the rest of the music community – your opinions, your taste and your music, so to make sure your voice is heard and join in the conversation join us on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail us with what you think the rest of the 6Music community should be listening to on nowplaying@bbc.co.uk.

We look forward to hearing from you!