The Internet and the music industry have forever been at loggerheads especially given the piracy that is rampant on the web. However, leaving the music behemoth’s aside, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the web has played a very important role in the spread of various genres and rise of inde musicians. MySpace, Last FM and to a very formidable extent YouTube and other such sites have helped a lot of musicians garner attention.
Taking cue from this forbidden love affair of the digital and the music, Them Clones – a Delhi based Rock band has decided to use the medium comprehensively to launch their debut album. According to Afaqs, Them Clones have decided to cut their debut album — Love.Hate.Heroes, based completely on votes received on its official website, www.themclones.com. The band is using a combination of traditional gigs (live performances) and popular social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, to drive traffic to their website.
This is how things work:
- Fans go to their website – www.themclones.com
- Once there, they will choose 10 out of the 17 songs on preview that they want on the album
- These songs then become eligible to become part of the official album playlist, based on the votes they garner.
Selecting the songs is a simple affair – you play the preview clip and if you like it you drag the song and drop into your playlist column on the website and mail them through the contact form below it. Not as complicated as I make it sound really, take a look at this box below.
- Them Clones Playlist Creator
Don’t try to drag and drop here that is just an image.
Anyway, the reasons why our rocker folks have gone online are two. One it’s way more economical than traditional advertising and tie ups, and secondly most of their fans are very active on the web especially on the social networking circuit. In fact their Facebook fans add up to more than a 1,200 (Them Clones: I think you should get a vanity URL on Facebook, simply because you can).
Maybe they could have optimized their site to be a little more social media and viral friendly than just links to Facebook and MySpace, but that’s alright. It is certainly a good attempt in general, and hopefully will succeed enough to gain attention of our other musician friends and make them jump the bandwagon. Which is good for the web and digital media in general.
PS: I really love the fact that their website is on WordPress. 
