(PRWeb) December 21, 2006 -- PLUG Los Angeles is confirmed for January 13, 2007 at Little Radio Warehouse at 1218 Long Beach Avenue in Los Angeles. The PLUG City Highlights Tour spotlights the uniqueness of the local music scenes in cities across North America and recognizes those who support their communities and make them shine. PLUG and imeem are committed to supporting the local independent music scene. The LA installment of the PLUG City Highlights Tour will feature some of the best local unsigned bands in the area. Fans can check out profiles of the performing bands.

PLUG and imeem are holding a contest to give one up-and-coming band a chance to open up for the rising indie bands playing PLUG LA.
•Bands will submit an original song to the PLUG Los Angeles 'meem' (for the uninitiated, that's a group area within the imeem.com online community)
•The bands headlining the show will judge the top rated songs
•One lucky winner will be chosen to perform on the PLUG bill
For more information on the contest, please visit: http://plugla.imeem.com/.

The City Highlights tour has launched successful events in Austin, Brooklyn, Miami, Toronto and Detroit in 2006. PLUG partners with top promoters and trendsetters in each market, large and small, across North America to curate all-local shows highlighting the best up-and-coming bands, artists, film makers, fashion designers, blogs, zines and more.

"With the success of PLUG Brooklyn and PLUG Detroit City Highlights shows, we're thrilled to focus on the west coast," said Gerry Hart, founder PLUG. "We're also excited to partner with imeem again, to feature the performing bands, as well as holding our local band contests to find the best up-and-coming LA bands exclusively on imeem.com. PLUG is intent on connecting fans to their local music scene, and it's very easy to discover them utilizing imeem's social media community for our City Highlights Tour."

"Imeem is excited to partner with PLUG to showcase the independent music scene in Los Angeles," said Steve Jang, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, imeem, inc. "PLUG and imeem are featuring photos, videos, and music on our community, where fans can check out artists that played the recent Brooklyn and Detroit PLUG City Highlights Tour as well as vote on a local band to open at PLUG Los Angeles."

The PLUG City Highlights Tour is an extension of the PLUG Independent Awards, which will be held in New York City on February 10, 2007. This year's nominees and voting ballot can be viewed at http://plugawards.com/general_vote.php, until January 26, 2007. Past performances at the ceremonies have included Sufjan Stevens, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Aesop Rock, RJD2, The National and Celebration. Past presenters have included TV on the Radio, Matisyahu, Laura Cantrell and Langhorne Slim. In 2005, Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips "beamed in" from the set of Christmas On Mars to accept a PLUG Impact Award.

Please visit the PLUG website for more details and to view the 3 minute EPK at: http://plug.imeem.com/video/YadVkgF3/the_plug_awards/.

http://plug.imeem.com • http://www.plugawards.com

About imeem, inc.
Imeem is the next-generation online community for social media, where people can share, express and discover all types of user-created content. Imeem enables users to upload and stream user-created video, audio, photos, blogs, and playlists all from one place, attracting an independent and diverse community of bands, filmmakers, photographers, DJs, video nuts and fans.

Website: http://www.imeem.com

About PLUG Independent Awards
Founded in 2001, with the first live event having launched 2004, The PLUG Awards are different from all of the institutional accolades for the music industry such as the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, GRAMMY Awards, Teen Choice Awards, MTV Music Awards, etc. Those are all devoted to recognizing the mainstream hits. Very rarely do these awards honor, let alone embrace, independent music or the community of artists and fans who now represent nearly 30% of the global music market with $3.5 billion in market capitalization. This is a community that thinks for itself and doesn't take its cues from mainstream media or marketing.

PLUG is about the independent music community coming together to recognize our own. This includes everyone from writers, DJs, websites, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, managers, indie retailers, and most importantly fans - who gather together each year to celebrate the artists who live and flourish in the margins. PLUG is about the artists who inspire and the music that disrupts the artistic and corporate mediocrity and inertia that dominates our culture. The film industry has Sundance, the music industry has PLUG.

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