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!

Interview with a Fellow Music Geek

For my interview, I asked my boyfriend, Danny Post, a few questions. Danny is both a tech geek and a a fan of music of the indie persuasion (he's the one who showed me the Google Arcade Fire video). He, like me, lives in a more sparsely populated area in North Carolina, and thus doesn't get a lot of exposure to different types of music outside of the Internet. So, I asked him some questions about a few of his favorite things in music and online. (Caution: Danny's answers are pretty loud, something weird was going on with Skype. Sorry!)

Here's the text of the interview:

Me: How has the internet introduced you to lesser known artists?

Danny: I use websites like last.fm  to find music and, y'know, get artist recommendations. and just kinda find artists out there.

C: What service do you use to find and/or listen to music?

D: I use Slacker and YouTube. Slacker's pretty cool because you can play, y'know, different genre stations  so, y'know, alternative, rock, electronic and you can kinda also put in, y'know, bands that you like and genres that you like and it'll give you like, a whole custom-made playlist for yourself to listen to.

C: What is the most creative music video that you've seen recently?

D: There's a video by the Chemical Brothers called "Swoon" and it's really neat just because, y'know, the whole black background and it's just people's outlines, y'know, the back and the different patterns and it's just really creative and really innovative.

C: Who's your favorite artist that not many people are familiar with?

D: I've been enjoying Ellie Goulding and uh, Gold Panda. They're both really excellent artists that have had some really cool shows and they've played some awesome sets.

C: Alright. Name an artist that has successfully used the internet to promote their music.

D: When I was in high school, I listened to a band called Rediscover, and the first two albums they put out were free, and y'know, once they started getting more popular they started charging for their music and I thought it was really cool way to go about, y'know, getting out there.

C: Alright, thanks!

Stereotypes Are Great

Although I'm (obviously) not in favor of generalizations based on inherent traits, people's tastes and preferences are usually a pretty good judgment of their character. That's why I find Sterotyping People by Their Favorite Indie Bands pretty hilarious. Its generalizations sometimes border on the absurd, but many of them are pretty spot-on. Read, laugh, and be a little bit embarrassed.        

The Best Talent Show on the Internet

While it's not technically a "talent show", La Blogotheque's "Les Concerts a Emporter" (or "Take Away Shows") are a true showcase of the raw talent of many indie artists. The shows are filmed in beautiful locations by talented directors and require artists to perform their songs acoustically, on the spot. There's a lot of performances to sift through, so here are my favorite 5.

1. Arcade Fire performing Neon Bible
The huge (both metaphorically and literally) band manages to fit inside a freight elevator for their performance and prove quite resourceful, ripping magazine pages for percussion. A beautiful, subdued rendition.

2. Local Natives performing Who Knows, Who Cares
The California natives create a whole new arrangement, substituting vocals for instruments. It's even better than the original- the harmonies will echo in your head for days.

3. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros performing Home
The charming tune gets a charmingperformance atop a piano amidst a crowd of people.

4. Beirut performing Nantes
With trash can drums and singer Zach acting as a conductor, Beirut performs Nantes as a fantastic street orchestra.

5. Sufjan Stevens performing The Lakes of Canada
The multi-talented singer-songwriter is at first reluctant to perform on a windy rooftop, but the beautiful view and the delicate cover are both well worth the wait.

The New Music Chart

Even though buying tangible albums are a thing of the past, iTunes still tracks the most purchased songs and albums. But thanks to illegal downloading, this isn't an entirely accurate representation of the most popular songs. Enter We Are Hunted, a music site that tracks the 99 newest, most-discussed songs across social media websites, blogs, and forums. Not only does We Are Hunted function as an online music chart, it also has Pandora-like "Discover" function. After you rate a few samplings of various songs, it creates a playlist according to your tastes. Unlike Pandora, there are no ads, you can skip as many songs as you want, and the website layout is much more attractive and user-friendly. Listen and enjoy!

The Internet Killed the Video Star

Many lament the death of 80's and 90's era MTV. The channel has resorted to a hub for reality television and shunned the music video programs of its glory days. But television programming is becoming overshadowed by the flexibility and freedom of the Internet, and since television has abandoned music videos, the Internet has taken then up.
YouTube has become a popular way to view music videos. Lady Gaga's Paparazzi video can attest to this fact- as of right now, it has 55,312,298 views. But with a new medium for music videos comes a new way to view them. Google has done an experiment of sorts with Arcade Fire's song "We Used to Wait" from their latest album, The Suburbs. It uses HTML5, the latest revision of HTML. It also uses Google Maps and Google Street view to open up windows showing your hometown, which you type in at the beginning to the video. 
While it requires you to close all other tabs and programs, the graphics and innovation in the video are quite impressive. The internet can do things television programs could never dream of, and Google's Arcade Fire video shows promise for expanding the borders of creativity for the visual representation of music.


Watch the video here- it's recommended that you do so using the Google Chrome browser.