Former head of Virgin Wines Rowan Gormley is not impressed at the situation the wine industry finds itself in. The domination of the supermarkets, he says, is detrimental to the consumer, the grower, and of course the wine.

According to Gormley, the wine that makes it to the shelf is overpriced, over-marketed, and over-packaged. Taste is secondary. “A third of the cost is going on marketing”, he says. ”What winemakers would rather be doing is making good wine. And for customers, why pay to be sold to?” As the blurb on the site says: “Naked Wines is an online farmer's market for the kind of winemakers who want to spend their lives making great wine, rather than selling it.”

The company aims to strip off a number of layers, and allow the consumer to connect with the growers, those small-scale lovers of the art from around the world. Back on the site, there’s a distinct social-networking feel. Buyers and sellers alike have a profile, and the surprisingly affordable wine can be recommended to the user in the way products with similar identities are promoted on Amazon or Last.fm

Gormley, who formerly headed up Virgin Wines, led Naked Wines to its pre-launch in November. But all he’ll say about the acrimonious departure, apart from the fact he managed to bring 19 staff along with him, was that there were a lot of ‘limitations’ at Virgin. “People always thought Virgin first and wines second”, he muses.

This time round, creative ideas are flowing. After putting some of his own money into the venture, along with an undisclosed amount from Wein International, he recruited ‘Archangels’ to source the wines: regular people who would have their opinions listened to. As Gormley says, most wine drinkers describe their interest in wine along the lines of “I don’t know much about wine but I know what I like.” And so far, they appear to like Naked Wines and its unique ‘Angels’ concept. Says Gormley of the Christmas period just gone: “We recruited a number of customers, but what we’re really happy about is getting customers to sponsor wine-makers: Over half the people that signed up became angels, so we’re very happy with that.” The angel system is as follows. The winemaker gives away free wine to show you the quality (you pay for delivery), and you try it out. If you like it, you pre-pay a monthly five pounds to your account and the next batch, helping ensure that the maker has a good cash flow.

Where the money for the company comes in, is taking a cut on the sales. And unlike many other businesses, it might not even be a bad time to launch, with sales of wine historically faring well during economic downturns. And with the added bonus of a real connection to the people actually producing the wine, instead of a whole host of middle-men, Naked Wines might be on to something.

With music fans essentially the people that pay the money to fund record deals, you’d think they were the ones consulted on which bands get the capital needed to get their music to album stage. Until recently however, it didn’t work like that. But with the launch of slicethepice.com the responsibility and power is being shared out.

According to CEO David Courtier Dutton the site is ‘a filtering and financing engine operating within the music industry –we can work with unsigned artists, established artists, or finance artists underfunded on a label. We’re a financing hub, but one that is attached to the artists.’ Slicethepie lets artists raise money directly from their fans to record their album, letting the fans become more involved in the process, but also allowing them to benefit financially once their investment helps the band’s success. While bands have to pay the company a royalty fee, they keep their copyright and publishing rights – unlike with a major label.

The engine of the site is similar to the trend of social networking - or at least peer review. With 1.5 million user-generated music reviews already on the site, and 10,000 new appearing each day (for which the reviewer is paid at least 3p), advice and tips from fellow fans allow the cream to rise to the top. Slicethepie users, either plain old investors or just music fans, scout and review music they hear and give that music a rating from 1-10. Courtier Dutton is adamant that this ‘wisdom of crowds’ approach is best. ‘If you get a group of people to solve a problem, they always come to a better decision than a room of experts’, he says. ‘It’s the way that google works.’ And bands are already making it through the process. Several bands such as six-piece Scars On 45 have risen the ranks to album financing stage after hitting the top 1% of acts on the site. This particular Bradford group has been booked at The Isle of Wight Festival – both this year and next.

The website launched in June 2007, and has so far raised a total of £2.5m through three separate business angel rounds. Although Courtier Dutton has a legal background, as well as some time in software, his commercial director Paul Brown previously worked at Sony BMG. But that doesn’t stop Courtier Dutton from being fairly scathing about major labels: ‘The problem is the music industry is controlled by four major labels who have a stranglehold on what people can listen to.’ Slicethepie is different, he says.’ This just seemed a simple way to turn it from a VC approach to a free market approach.'