Budding rockers can now play bass with Sir Paul McCartney after the star signed up to become a video tutor on a music website that won an important award last night.

Now Play It, a downloadable video training service featuring a course by Sir Paul, won Best Digital Service at the BT Digital Music Awards.

Other famous names to contibute tutorials to the site include Blur, KT Tunstall, Placebo and Athlete, producing 30-minute lessons in which they guide amateurs through their hits.

The videos, which include chord patterns and drum charts, cost £4 each and can be viewed on video-enabled digital music players. Artists describe their songwriting process and explain how to master tricky riffs, in a modern equivalent of Bert Weedon’s famous Play in a Day tutorial book.

Outside Line, the company behind Now Play It, is in talks to offer its 400 lessons free to schools. The Times has learnt that Sir Paul recorded his first video tutorial last week, choosing Ever Present Past, a song from his album of this year, Memory Almost Full.

A Now Play It spokesman said: “Sir Paul recorded lessons for bass, drums and guitar all inside one hour. He hopes to record further tutorials from his classic back catalogue.”

The tutorials also count towards Top 40 chart sales and give record companies, decimated by downloading, a valuable new income stream.

With Radiohead announcing that fans can name the price of their new website-only album, the Digital Music Awards offered further evidence of the diverse new challenges facing the traditional recording industry.

BT Digital Music Awards 2007 winners

Best Official Music site Keane (www.keanemusic.com)

Digital Service Now Play It (www.nowplayit.com )

Innovation SliceThePie.com

Music Store iTunes

Artist of the Year Funeral For A Friend

Breakthrough Artist Enter Shikari

Radio Station BBC 6 Music

Music Community Live Nation’s Download Festival

Video podcast Bloc Party

Music Blog David Gilmour (davidgilmour.musicblog.co.uk )

Podcast Hospital Records’ London Elektricity

Pop Artist Natasha Bedingfield

Best Rock/Indie Muse

Outstanding Contribution to Digital Music Thomas Dolby

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