Free for All

With the death of MTV, print magazines, and CD sales, indie bands are forced to come up with newer and more creative avenues of promotion. Songs featured in advertisements, innovative YouTube videos, and promotions on blogs and social networking websites are a few examples of promotion. While many of these avenues seem like economical decisions, it seems that more increasingly bands are just giving it away for free.
The most obvious example is that of everyone's favorite band, Radiohead. The band allowed users to essentially "name their own price" on their album In Rainbows. But this trend is not just exclusive to well-established bands like Radiohead. Noise-pop newcomers Sleigh Bells released their first single of their first album, Tell 'Em, for free before their album was even released. This past year, Target released a free Christmas album called The Christmas Gig with songs recorded exclusively for the album, which featured indie favorites like Best Coast, Wavves, and Bishop Allen.
While ten years ago, this might have been seen as ridiculous marketing idea for a band, economically, it's now one of the smartest ways of promotion, especially on the internet. Pirating and downloading music illegally have become almost accepted practices- so why shouldn't bands embrace free music in their business practices? Not only do free tracks create buzz amongst fans, but they also make tracks available to music bloggers, who can in turn expose bands to a larger audience.
But is this a smart idea for indie bands, who often make little enough money as it is? Maybe.
What do you think?

Darwin Deez and Modern Skirts

On Valentine's weekend, I decided to celebrate with my significant other in a different way. We attended the Darwin Deez show at Shiprocked (aka Snug Harbor) in Charlotte on February 12.

 

Ta Da! Here we are!

Darwin Deez is an indie-pop band who just recently released their debut album. Not only was the album a "bedroom album" made with the help of computer recording programs like garage band, but Darwin Deez owes a lot of their success to the internet, which helped popularize them through their creative Youtube music video. The opening band was Modern Skirts, who I honestly had never heard of before. But while they had a lot of technical difficulties (they used computers and synth for a majority of their songs), they were very good.

 

Here's Modern Skirts!

But the main attraction could simply not be beat. Not only did Darwin Deez perform their catchy songs well live, but they incorporated hilarious dance routines as well. We didn't get any good video of it since it was very dark, but they looked kind of like this.
Afterward, we bought a Darwin Deez "mixtape" (read: CD mix) called "Wonky Beats", a rap mixtape with samples of the 70's movie version of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". Not my taste, but definitely interesting nonetheless. This was definitely one of the most entertaining shows I have been to in a while. 

 

The Spring Dance

  

 

Let the music commence!