Remember this track?

The Germans call it an Ohrwurm, which translates as Ear Worm – the kind of song that burrows deep into your mind and won’t let you think of anything else. The kind of track you find yourself humming and infecting other people with. Well Rednex – who are nearly as big as the Hoff in Germany, have produced a new track ‘Devil’s on the Loose’, equally as poisonous but fortunately much less catchy. They’ve had millions of downloads so far, and are very pleased with themselves for getting the placement on TPB’s homepage. The stunt will undoubtedly create publicity for both parties (I’m already writing about it, and so are other bloggers), but the really odd thing about it is Rednex’s political stand on their reasons for teaming up with the Bay:

Pirate Bay is among the Top 100 most visited sites in the world with 20 million visitors per day and we are on the FRONT PAGE. Not to mention how much we admire them. If you want to know why, read here.

If you like the song, if you love us or even if you hate us and love someone else, please consider giving us a donation (click here)! We are giving away our songs for free now and have absolutely NO CLUE how to make money to make new songs & videos, but whatever, we’ll sort it out somehow.

Time to go… we got some SERIOUS CELEBRATION TO DO, YOU WACKPOTZ !!!

…”Whatever, we’ll sort it out somehow.”?! That’s a sensible attitude to online marketing… There’s more of this sort of wierdness on the 28 page [!] online greeting and manifesto they’ve published through their site, referring to their linkup with TPB. For me, the cherry on top is the opportunity to buy the band and all their doings for $2.9 million dollars, as advertised on their site as part of their ‘membership’ page, where they’ve got a Josh Freese style list of packages that you can buy to support them (a private show costs a mere E11,111).

E2,000,000: Buy all of it and Rednex is all yours! Put your grandmas dog in the band, release 87 different remixes of Cotton Eye Joe and call the next album “When I went fishing with Stephen Hawking and he just went on and on about gluons and morons… BAH!” (OR do something serious and profitable with it), it is totally up to you! Anything goes cause you are the boss! Make world history and become the first one ever to buy your own No.1 pop band! For more information, go to www.rednexforsale.com. (you can’t buy it here cause first we need to sign a lot of papers and shit)

I can’t decide whether I think this is genius or madness, but it’s certainly novel. Perhaps it’s just refreshingly honest. A band of Wackpotz that can [amazingly] get themselves loads of airplay and online exposure, but have no idea how to monetise it – seems a bit like the early days of Twitter, when they had millions of users, but no idea how to make the service profitable. Instead of flailing about trying to sell their music, they just want to cash in with someone who knows what they’re doing and then take their foot off the gas. Sounds nearly as lazy as their repetitive, samey music [whoops, did I type that out lo[u]d?].

While I can’t deny that they’re making a splash with their new track, I’d suggest to anyone distributing their music through RouteNote that you think a little harder about monetising your album before you launch into this kind of opportunity, and get yourself into a position to really take advantage of it. Maybe have a look at our online music self promotion guide first!

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“…we know that fans are passionate about an artist, and they’re very excited about a new album. So to be able to give them something to satiate that demand somewhat has been quite effective. There’s also the purpose of giving people a piece of music to ‘try before they buy’, if you like. We get a lot of love and a lot of coverage in the blog world, because I think our artists are very suited to that world.

We don’t give music blogs free reign, because you’d find that each blog would post a different track from the album, and so ten minutes after you’d publicised the album, people could just go and download the whole album (laughs).

So by making available one chosen, one focus track from a new album – much as you take a track to radio – there’s kind of an unwritten dialogue between us and the bloggers. We don’t tell them to post it, we don’t say they can’t post it; if people post the whole album, we’ll definitely say they can’t do that, and we’ll get it taken down. But they understand that if we post an mp3 to one of our label sites or blogs, then they won’t get any grief from us at all [if they repost it to their blog].

This really helps focus the campaign around a lead track, much as you do when taking a track to radio. There’s no new science here; this is just what the record industry has been doing for decades. We’re just applying that to the digital age.”

Making a few tracks available for streaming or download online is a great hook for pulling people into an album or gig ticket purchase – that’s one of the major reasons myspace was such a success, bands need to connect with fans these days. Blink 182′s Tom Delonge is of the same opinion: [via Hypebot, via Techdirt, via The Guitar Center]

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Americana, York

King Courgette are Poppa ‘King’ Courgette, String Bean Slim, Bad Apple Two T’s Curtis, Hot Chilli McGrath and Zucchini Bill. Named after a hilarious incident down Poppa Courgette’s allotment (well, he thinks it’s hilarious so let’s all try and keep it that way), we play a lot of old-time blues tunes by the likes of Blind Boy Fuller and The Stanley Brothers, and try to give them our own unique ’Courgette’ sound. Banjo, harmonica, mandolin and ukulele all feature along the way, plus our percussionist Zucchini Bill is a fine purveyor of both hambone and self-harm (he is classically trained at the latter). We can be found playing one-off gigs in and around the York area. At a recent private function, we were upstaged by the unveiling of the buffet, but hey, usually we get a good response, once the beer kicks in. In fact, somebody came up to us recently and told us we had a “touch of The Wurzels”. Apparently this is a compliment. Hopefully it’s not true. Well you can decide for yourselves by having a listen to Hesitation Blues, our version of a Blind Reverend Gary Davies song. (no, not THAT Gary Davies). It’s taken from our debut CD entitled Diggin’. We recorded it earlier this year at the fantastic Soundmill Studios in Leeds. We have an old-fashioned physical version sold through shops and at gigs, plus of course, thanks to the good people of Routenote, it is now available globally in digital form. A track was recently featured on the legendary Tom Robinson’s 6Music show. (Our ambition is to get on the Bob Harris show – anyone who can help us with this would be very very loved!!!) If you want to come and see us in action, we are playing the Victoria Vaults, Nunnery Lane, York on Friday 20th November (entrance free). We have also been asked to support the Cangalosi Cards at Banjo Jim’s in New York in the near future, thereby giving us all a quick holiday and keeping up our impressive record of only playing gigs at places with ‘York’ in their name. Well, thanks for reading this. Why not pop by to our Myspace page and say hello!!!

www.myspace.com/kingcourgette

[EDIT - Cheers chaps, have one in Lendal Cellars for us, just steer clear of Ziggy's afterwards, OK?]

Hesitation Blues

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Rock/Pop – Norfolk UK
Originally a college band formed by James Granger (Guitar) Lee Ashby (Bass & Bad Jokes) in 1996, The Monty, as they were then called, soon gained momentum performing their brand of Brit pop-rock material at countless venues around the UK. With influences such as The Who, Police and Pink Floyd to name a few, the mainstream classic rock sound that followed brought many fans of all ages. The band changed names on various occasions along with many drummers and keyboard players too. For a year they were known as The Hairy Palm Sundaes, injecting a sense of humour into the set whilst creating a reality rockumentary during one particular tour (yet to raise its head!).

The Band soon found a creative niche with Darren Link (Drums) and Matthew Richards (Mellodian), changed their name to The Swelltones (partly derived from their coastal origins) and developed their characteristic full-on sound, crossing the genre borders with a rock-reggae-punk-funk fusion. They subsequently took to the studio with producer Ross Griggs a.k.a – Billy Unbelievable (Boned) to create the EP Big Fat Fish.

With a busy live schedule and an album in the pipeline for 2010 [EDIT: We look forward to hearing that in moderation ], you’d better watch out for these guys as they continue to put the fun into funk and rock on and on and on!

Goldfish Bowl

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Location:Wiltshire UK

I am a solo performer/producer from a little Village called Tollard Royal. I produce all my music from my bedroom recording on a zoom H4 and putting all the sounds together on my laptop. Away from studio work I also have a live setup. I use an MPC, Kaoss Pad 3, Boss RC-50 looper and a wide variety of instruments that I bring in and out of soundscapes and loop based melodies.
I love making music. It would probably drown me If it could, but I try and keep my head above the flow. Just to keep myself in control of time. If I don’t I find myself surrounded by instruments but not able to record because the dawn corus is too loud and the fact that the sun is rising makes my feel ill. I get lost in another world when I am making music, sometimes I stay there for hours on end. Untill eventually I am forced back into reality by a sound that wasnt made by me. I dont feel these hours are wasted. If anything there some of the best hours of my life. But there also the shortest. The world is an incredible place and has so much to offer. I realised a few years ago that I don’t think I could ever be truly sad because there is always something far bigger and more incredible than anything I could be sad about. My life is quite pleasant though. So I could understand if you can’t relate. Its just, trees, to me are enough to keep me smiling forever. When I make a piece of music that I think matches what I think about trees, I will have got as far as I can get musically. Please enjoy my explorartion untill that point.

My website: www.memotonemusic.blogspot.com
My myspace: http://www.myspace.com/williamyatesmusic.

[Edit: memotone is James' (our support engineer) favourite artist on RouteNote after the Bloody Tentacles (his own band)]

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Location: Portsmouth UK

Bio: Hailing from the south coast of England in a blur of whiskey soaked rock n roll meet Jenna’s Revenge!

The four piece, consisting of the charismatic “Sic” McLaren’s often astounding vocals, Craig Farley’s neck-breakingly catchy guitar riffs and blistering solos, the ever groove laden bass rumblings of “Super Nice Brad Ice”, and the hard hitting punch of Greg Daley’s drums, play an energetic blend of unashamed, “old school”, feel good rock music.

The band always give a frenetic live show that has seen them play alongside the likes of New Wave of British Heavy Metal legends “Tygers of Pan Tang”, controversial pop-punks “Towers of London”, friends of Iron Maiden “Voodoo Six”, the Myspace phenomena “Koopa”, and American guitar hero Adam Bomb.

Jenna’s Revenge aim to entertain and delight you and with song subjects ranging the full ambit from strippers to warfare all covered with tongue firmly in cheek we’re sure you’ll find something to tap your toes to!

Inspired by a wide range of influences from Extreme, Queen, Motley Crue and Skid Row to Rod Stewart, the Quireboys and the red hot chilli peppers, along with a list of other bands that could go on for several pages, Jenna’s Revenge set out to make music that we enjoy since there seemed to be a serious lack of bands around that were doing that for us!  Hopefully you’ll like what we do too as that’s pretty key to our plan for world domination succeeding…

Our website: www.jennasrevenge.co.uk or www.myspace.com/jennasrevenge

Years by user309147

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Starting with the obvious: Myspace. It’s an ugly, cumbersome brute of a website, very nearly swamped in photos of obnoxious people taken at arms length while they pout or flex, but it’s still the first port of call when people are searching for bands online. Sorry, I wish you could avoid it, but you can’t really afford to…

You don’t need to monkey around with your page too much. Keep your best tracks online and your gigs up to date, and you’re about done: the neater the changes you make to the page the better. Highly patterned or coloured backgrounds only make a page harder to read, and the point of having the information on your page up there is so people can read it… Don’t be afraid of a little modification though, just make sure it doesn’t obscure your page, and fits in with the image you’re presenting.

Make sure you’ve got links up to wherever you’re selling your music (we’ve got an iTunes linkmaker on our tools page) and merchandise (see the guide on being a paypal seller).

There is a swarm of other music social network sites out on the web, and you should probably have some presence on each of them. I wouldn’t recommend slavishly maintaining each of 20 profiles though – set up something simple on each one you feel like using, directing readers to your main profile on whatever-it-is.com and keep them updated using artistdata.com’s profile syndication service. It’s a bit like TubeMogul, but for gig dates and blog posts, put updates on artistdata and they’re forwarded to each of your accounts, once you’ve got it set up right.

It’s still worth checking in to all your accounts and making sure they’re all working properly, sifting through the inboxes. Just do it once a month and you’ll be fine.

Concentrating on one channel or site means people will know where to come to find your properly updated material, you won’t lose the opportunity to get fans from minority sites, search engines will have an easier time finding you, and you won’t bash your brains out keeping a hundred half-arsed profiles running.

A good shortcut when you’re trying to build a fanbase on social networking sites is to get your fans and peers to promote you. Offer other bands you like a mail-swap; write to your fans about them and ask them to write to theirs about you. If you write the mailout for them you’re more than likely to get a yes to the swap. You can also try the same with anyone in your fanbase who’s got a million friends – offer them a CD or a t-shirt if they mail their friends about you. It seems mercenary, and it is, but it will get your name out there, with a personal recommendation…

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In both new and old media channels (online/mobile vs. broadcast/physical) there will be brands specialising in different areas of music. If you’ve been sensible, and figured out who your fans are likely to be, then it makes sense to make those brands that cater to your likely fans a priority. If you’re in a j-pop outfit, don’t bother sending press releases to the editor of Kerrang! This might seem obvious, but in directing your promotional efforts efficiency is of cardinal importance.

If you have £40 sloshing about with nothing to do, get hold of a copy of the unsigned guide. This lovely little tome has got a list as long as your arm of magazine and radio contacts that are looking for your material.

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If there’s one set of people that you want on your side whilst promoting yourself online, it’s the music bloggers. They’re out there, trawling the web and the venues for the next cool act, hoping they’ll stumble across a gem they can hold up to their readers, gleaming in its freshness and individuality, reflecting it’s glory and brilliance onto their own work.

Hyperbole aside, you need these guys on your team. Treat them right, make them a priority whenever you make a new video or record a new track, let them have it for a week or so before you put it out for general release. A good relationship with a music blogger is a perfect symbiosis – they want new, interesting music and content, and you want coverage and introductions to new potential fans.

Treat bloggers like royalty and they’ll reward you by putting up your press releases, tracks, videos, photos, gig reviews or whatever else you can get them. Put yourself in their shoes and think about what they’d like to be sent – sucking up with free merch will win you points, especially if they like your music.

Some of the most popular music blogs are listed here. Every one of them has a contact email onsite; there is no excuse for leaving them off your list when you’re mailing people about your new album. Mail them individually, build a relationship, they’re in control of a big, music loving audience that you need access to.

Gorilla vs. Bear

Drowned in Sound

Hypebot

Pretty Goes With Pretty

Aquarium Drunkard

Large Hearted Boy

Aurgasm

Soul Sides

NME

CMJ

Rolling Stone

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