Editorial: The sound of 2010?

Thanks to the BBC Sound of 2010 poll, Stornoway is now on the musical map. Well the Oxford band is, not the Hebridean town.

And that's about as Scottish as the record industry in 2010 is going to get, if you believe the BBC's 'tastemakers'.

In case you haven't yet heard, this is the list of names and locations of the artists who will be soundtracking next year:

Daisy Dares You - London
Delphic - Manchester
Devlin - Essex
The Drums - New York
Everything Everything - Manchester
Giggs - London
Gold Panda - London
Ellie Goulding - Powys, Wales
Hurts - Manchester
Joy Orbison - Croydon
Marina And The Diamonds - London
Owl City - Minnesota
Rox - London
Stornoway - Oxford
Two Door Cinema Club - Northern Ireland

The main criteria for the annual predictor game, which always ladles each act with a generous helping of hype, is that the artists tipped must not have had a top 20 single or album before mid-November.

Now we're not implying that any of the acts we've featured in the past year should necessarily have been included, because potential unit-shifting is not one of the criteria we adopt at UtR. But there are Scottish acts who could potentially make a commercial breakthrough but are conspicuous by their absence. Unicorn Kid, Broken Records or Young Fathers, to name a few.

If this sounds eerily familiar, then you may remember our last editorial debate, 'Does thinking local mean staying local?', where we lamented the flat-out rejection of four of Scotland's most exciting bands by a London-based music editor.

Disheateningly, the massed ranks of the music media appear to be resolutely stationed down south, and from 136 pundits, the BBC hasn't enlisted the help of anyone in the Scottish scene. If a music supervisor for Hollyoaks is deemed an expert, then where are the Scottish radio DJs, magazine editors, critics and label scouts?

We don't want to come across as bitter, Saltire-waving nationalists, but surely our native music makers deserve better recognition than they're currently receiving on a UK-wide level.

What do you think?
Is the BBC poll a good representation of cutting edge music, or is it unfairly weighted towards London?