Comments on: One-Man Blog Bands, Webcam Tours, and Getting That Big Break on the Interweb

By: Create Digital Music » A Real Web Music Success Story: A Death Metal Parrot Clears the Way for Avian Vocalists

Thu, 25 May 2006 13:49:12 +0000

[...] You may have heard a lot about the InterWeb, a new network that magically connects people around the world through their Comput-ers. You might have heard about its powers to promote music, perhaps by an ill-researched story yesterday where I stupidly pointed to a UK artist who will go unmentioned here. (As it turns out, which I would have known had I bothered to, um, read, all of the following did indeed happen: “girl produces webcast from basement,” “girl gets fan following,” “girl makes it big,” “girl signs record deal,” “girl hires publicist.” Just in the reverse order. It doesn’t explain why anyone listened to a publicist in the first place, or which “punk rockers”, exactly, wear “flowers in their hair”, or why Sandi losing her cellphone made her want to go back, inexplicably, to both 1977 and 1969. Plot of Back to the Future IV? Moving on.) [...]

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:53:02 +0000

Interesting . . . and yet, strangely uninteresting. In fact, the REAL news story here — people actually READ a promoters press releases (which is what the naysayers claimed drove up her traffic)?

Like, really?

I’m on quite a few promoters mailing lists. Sometimes I click just to find out how bad the artists are they’re sending me.

Or, of course, maybe people really didn’t, and those traffic numbers are wildly inflated, too. (Very likely.) For whatever reason, she’s climbed to the top of the charts. But, then again, who cares?

So, anyway, sorry I mentioned it. :)

I’ll turn back to the one true indie artist who CAN inspire me:

http://www.reptilianrecords.com/reptilian/hatebeek.html

By: kaboomer

kaboomer — Thu, 25 May 2006 05:41:14 +0000

Found it on Garagespin:

http://www.garagespin.com/archives/the-power-of-pr-and-buzz-sandhi-thom.html

Click through to the Velvet Rope link (on the word “negative”).

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 24 May 2006 23:04:54 +0000

Where did you find that?

I was *highly* suspicious that that was exactly what happened. This didn’t have the ring of authenticity, somehow.

I still want to see some iSight webcasts. I bet it’ll be better than what a publicist cooks up, anyhow.

By: kaboomer

kaboomer — Wed, 24 May 2006 22:22:47 +0000

Pretty inspiring, the whole “Sandi Thom gets record deal via webcasting from her basement” thing, eh?

Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it went down. She signed with a fairly well-known publicist well before she started webcasting, and their connections are what snagged her the deal. The webcasts, especially the “signing ceremony” were essentially a strategy to stoke the pre-release buzz.

And I was all ready to go out and get myself an iSight…..