A British invasion for the digital age By Eric PfannerPublished: MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2006 LONDON: On Monday night in San Francisco, an American audience is scheduled to get its first live look at a British band that music industry promoters bill as the latest in a long line of proud musical exports that began with the Beatles more than 40 years ago.
The back story for the Arctic Monkeys is vaguely reminiscent of the Fab Four - four lads from a gritty city in northern England - but the resemblance ends there. These youths are from the all-digital generation, born and bred on the Internet.
For a business reeling from the effects of piracy and a dearth of successful international acts, a promising band like the Arctic Monkeys should be welcome.
Privately, however, some record company executives express a bit of ambivalence. Their unease stems not from the band itself but from the way it burst onto the British music scene. The Arctic Monkeys bypassed the record labels - for a time, at least - and used the Internet to help generate a following and to distribute their own music.
To some in the business, the experience shows how traditional functions of the record label - not just distributing CDs but finding and developing talent - are being changed by the Internet. Music companies are losing some control to specialists in online promotion, or even to the artists themselves.
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"Bands have a much greater ability to get themselves out to the public, gain some sort of recognition and credibility and then sign with a record label," said Guy Moot, managing director of EMI Music Publishing, which owns the rights to the Arctic Monkeys' music. "The development part is also happening much more outside the record companies."
Only a handful of musicians, including bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in New York, have managed to move on from giving away their music on the Internet to broader success. Nonetheless, scores have recorded their own music and posted it on "social networking" sites like Myspace.com in the hope of being discovered.
"If it were just about the Internet, there would be 600,000 bands out there that would have been signed by now, and they're not," said Simon Gavin at Polydor Records, part of Universal Music Group.
The Arctic Monkeys, ages 19 and 20, have demonstrated that they understand the power of the Internet they grew up with as a tool for communication and marketing.
The band was formed in 2003 in Sheffield, once the heart of the British steel industry but now, like many cities in northern England, a postindustrial capital of pubbing and clubbing. The band - Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Andy Nicholson and Matt Helders - toured the region extensively, giving hundreds of live shows, plugging its Web site and giving away free "demo" CD singles.
On their Web site, theArctic Monkeys also gave away full tracks of some of their songs and encouraged fans to share them with friends, an activity the music industry considers a criminal violation of copyright. They gained a following on British online music forums like Drowned in Sound, and word spread via sites like Myspace.com.
In time, "they had every A&R man in Europe chasing them," one record company executive said, referring to "artist and repertoire," the industry's term for talent-spotting.
The Arctic Monkeys resisted until last summer, then signed with a London-based independent label, Domino, with the music publishing rights going to EMI.
The free downloads were then phased out by Domino, and the Arctic Monkeys began to look more like a conventional product of the music industry machine. Their songs found a place on British radio, building anticipation for the eventual release of their album, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not."
"People seem to be looking at the Arctic Monkeys as some sort of lab experiment, in terms of getting a band out there so quickly," said Jonny Bradshaw, product manager for the Arctic Monkeys at Domino. "What gets lost is that it's this great rock 'n' roll band that has touched a nerve with a lot of people."
While Bradshaw attributed the band's success to old-fashioned virtues of good music, knowing the powers of online buzz may have helped, too. Weeks before "Whatever People Say I Am" was set to be released n January, its contents had leaked out on the Internet, and some in the music business suspect that was no accident.
"I don't know how that happened," Bradshaw said, though he conceded that the leak did not appear to have hurt sales. Domino moved up the release date of the album by one week, generating more publicity, and it sold about 360,000 copies in its first seven days, the best performance by a debut album in Britain. Once a band has been discovered, the Internet is also playing a role in developing the relationship with fans, with firms that specialize in online publicity grabbing some of the action. They work with Internet music sites to plant stories about a band and can develop "viral" tactics - involving no conventional advertising - to spread the word.
The virtual world creates opportunities for promoters that might be difficult to match off line. Hyperlaunch New Media, an online public relations firm in Bristol, England, that works with musicians, developed a viral video game for one client, a satirical British rap group named Goldie Lookin' Chain. It allows fans of the group to roll a virtual joint of marijuana; 300,000 people have played since the summer of 2004.
"The Internet lays the groundwork," said Don Jenkins, managing director of Hyperlaunch. "It creates a much closer relationship between bands and fans. You need that because the days when people walked into a shop and took a £15 punt on an album are gone."
Eric Pfanner IHT London 44-207-510-5718 44-7770671809
狂華 (05/08/2008)
A British invasion for the digital age
By Eric PfannerPublished: MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2006
LONDON: On Monday night in San Francisco, an American audience is scheduled to get its first live look at a British band that music industry promoters bill as the latest in a long line of proud musical exports that began with the Beatles more than 40 years ago.
The back story for the Arctic Monkeys is vaguely reminiscent of the Fab Four - four lads from a gritty city in northern England - but the resemblance ends there. These youths are from the all-digital generation, born and bred on the Internet.
For a business reeling from the effects of piracy and a dearth of successful international acts, a promising band like the Arctic Monkeys should be welcome.
Privately, however, some record company executives express a bit of ambivalence. Their unease stems not from the band itself but from the way it burst onto the British music scene. The Arctic Monkeys bypassed the record labels - for a time, at least - and used the Internet to help generate a following and to distribute their own music.
To some in the business, the experience shows how traditional functions of the record label - not just distributing CDs but finding and developing talent - are being changed by the Internet. Music companies are losing some control to specialists in online promotion, or even to the artists themselves.
Today in Business with Reuters
Toyota's quarterly profit drops 28%
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BlackRock to the rescue
"Bands have a much greater ability to get themselves out to the public, gain some sort of recognition and credibility and then sign with a record label," said Guy Moot, managing director of EMI Music Publishing, which owns the rights to the Arctic Monkeys' music. "The development part is also happening much more outside the record companies."
Only a handful of musicians, including bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in New York, have managed to move on from giving away their music on the Internet to broader success. Nonetheless, scores have recorded their own music and posted it on "social networking" sites like Myspace.com in the hope of being discovered.
"If it were just about the Internet, there would be 600,000 bands out there that would have been signed by now, and they're not," said Simon Gavin at Polydor Records, part of Universal Music Group.
The Arctic Monkeys, ages 19 and 20, have demonstrated that they understand the power of the Internet they grew up with as a tool for communication and marketing.
The band was formed in 2003 in Sheffield, once the heart of the British steel industry but now, like many cities in northern England, a postindustrial capital of pubbing and clubbing. The band - Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Andy Nicholson and Matt Helders - toured the region extensively, giving hundreds of live shows, plugging its Web site and giving away free "demo" CD singles.
On their Web site, theArctic Monkeys also gave away full tracks of some of their songs and encouraged fans to share them with friends, an activity the music industry considers a criminal violation of copyright. They gained a following on British online music forums like Drowned in Sound, and word spread via sites like Myspace.com.
In time, "they had every A&R man in Europe chasing them," one record company executive said, referring to "artist and repertoire," the industry's term for talent-spotting.
The Arctic Monkeys resisted until last summer, then signed with a London-based independent label, Domino, with the music publishing rights going to EMI.
The free downloads were then phased out by Domino, and the Arctic Monkeys began to look more like a conventional product of the music industry machine. Their songs found a place on British radio, building anticipation for the eventual release of their album, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not."
"People seem to be looking at the Arctic Monkeys as some sort of lab experiment, in terms of getting a band out there so quickly," said Jonny Bradshaw, product manager for the Arctic Monkeys at Domino. "What gets lost is that it's this great rock 'n' roll band that has touched a nerve with a lot of people."
While Bradshaw attributed the band's success to old-fashioned virtues of good music, knowing the powers of online buzz may have helped, too. Weeks before "Whatever People Say I Am" was set to be released n January, its contents had leaked out on the Internet, and some in the music business suspect that was no accident.
"I don't know how that happened," Bradshaw said, though he conceded that the leak did not appear to have hurt sales. Domino moved up the release date of the album by one week, generating more publicity, and it sold about 360,000 copies in its first seven days, the best performance by a debut album in Britain.
Once a band has been discovered, the Internet is also playing a role in developing the relationship with fans, with firms that specialize in online publicity grabbing some of the action. They work with Internet music sites to plant stories about a band and can develop "viral" tactics - involving no conventional advertising - to spread the word.
The virtual world creates opportunities for promoters that might be difficult to match off line. Hyperlaunch New Media, an online public relations firm in Bristol, England, that works with musicians, developed a viral video game for one client, a satirical British rap group named Goldie Lookin' Chain. It allows fans of the group to roll a virtual joint of marijuana; 300,000 people have played since the summer of 2004.
"The Internet lays the groundwork," said Don Jenkins, managing director of Hyperlaunch. "It creates a much closer relationship between bands and fans. You need that because the days when people walked into a shop and took a £15 punt on an album are gone."
Eric Pfanner IHT London 44-207-510-5718 44-7770671809
www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/12/yourmoney/music13.php