arctic monkeys: number 1 in the midweek charts.

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but im serious guys. can you think of any? my friend is telling me no one has done it before the arctic monkeys and it annoys me that i cant tell him "no, you're WRONG".

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 10:49 (eighteen years ago) link

I kind of suspect there'a more to it than just "buzz on the internet".

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 10:53 (eighteen years ago) link

well that's how it started. nme didnt pick up on it until they were already pretty popular.

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 10:56 (eighteen years ago) link

the arctic monkeys' record company has people on its payroll whose job it is to deliberately create a "buzz on the internet."

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 10:58 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah I was about to say, PH23_R 0NE "STREET TEAM".

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:01 (eighteen years ago) link

That doesn't actually make it any less of a buzz tho.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:01 (eighteen years ago) link

Yes it does because it is a FALSE BUZZ.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:02 (eighteen years ago) link

How does any buzz start?

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:03 (eighteen years ago) link

the arctic monkeys' record company has people on its payroll whose job it is to deliberately create a "buzz on the internet."

how can i become one of these people?

(NOT for the arctic monkeys obv.)

― The Lex (The Lex), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:04 (eighteen years ago) link

walk away lex. be a nurse. or a firefighter. or a teacher. do something useful for your world.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:05 (eighteen years ago) link

well I dont know how that would work. I have lots of friends who are into that scene and they all say it was definitely a word of mouth thing and the band playing every indie club in the uk slowly building their rep. i mean, they played infront of thousands of people at glastonbury and that was before anyone talked about them in the media and im not sure if they were signed to domino then.

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:05 (eighteen years ago) link

it was all planned. the media owed domino some favours.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:07 (eighteen years ago) link

If the "buzz" is whipped up by street teams, then it's not a "buzz", it's HYPE.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:09 (eighteen years ago) link

There's that synonym for it too, yes.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:10 (eighteen years ago) link

how can i become one of these people?

Get a media degree, fail to get a job in the media, develop a pathological hatred for the world, and there you go.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:13 (eighteen years ago) link

There was a book out a couple of years ago, about how "buzz" is created, including use of "street teamers" on message boards, chat rooms etc. I forget the title/author. I was going to buy it, but I didn't, because reading it would have just made me feel powerless and angry.

I often wonder, I mean we must get a bit of it on here, but how much?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:16 (eighteen years ago) link

Dom just describe me. Except I never tried to get a job.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Kaisers = Space

-- Dom Passantino (juror...), October 18th, 2005.

Wow...yes...this explains why I hate them so much.

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:22 (eighteen years ago) link

pashmina: look at some of the posts in the other arctic monkeys thread. i suspect some of the posts might be from such individuals.

but, again, i first heard of the arctic monkeys in january so this was before they were signed to anything and thats when they started to get the buzz on the internet. so i dont think it's fair to say it's all about street teams and record companies etc. this is something that was started by the fans.

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:22 (eighteen years ago) link

i repeat: who do you think started the buzz on the internet? it wasn't fans because at that time they didn't have any.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:24 (eighteen years ago) link

I trust my judgements enough to not worry too much about marketing strategies. I hear the AMs; I like them, or I don't - why should the mechanics behind me hearing them and making that decision be allowed to affect that decision?

This kind of marketing is about accelerating processes more than creating them, anyway: if the Arctic Monkeys weren't the right product for their target market, the street teams wouldn't do so well.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:27 (eighteen years ago) link

um, people who saw them play live obviously talked about them online. i used to post on the libertines message board and people were going ape shit over them 6 months ago. i suspect the same happened on other message boards for similar bands/music. that's how it started.

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:29 (eighteen years ago) link

6 months ago...make that 10 months ago

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:29 (eighteen years ago) link

and wasn't zane low playing them on the radio 10/12 months back too. radio != internet (as yet)

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:33 (eighteen years ago) link

he musth have. he picks up on anything as soon as a small uk indie band gets talked about on the internet or is mentioned in the press.

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:39 (eighteen years ago) link

why dont you all just shutup

― terry, Wednesday, 19 October 2005 11:50 (eighteen years ago) link

yes, people should stop talking about them.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 12:29 (eighteen years ago) link

wasn't it useful that the internet buzz over the arctic monkeys started on the libertines message board?

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 12:34 (eighteen years ago) link

I dont know if started there....but of course it was useful

so what?

― Lovelace (Lovelace), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 13:13 (eighteen years ago) link

Just how powerful is an indie label's street team that it can sell out tours before the band have had a record out - months, in fact, before the label has actually signed them? Hype only works when publicity outstrips actual access to material but anyone with P2P can have 20+ Arctic Monkeys songs in minutes because they made them all freely available on their website. If there's a buzz it's just because people like the songs. How on earth can this be phony hype?

― Dorian Lynskey, Wednesday, 19 October 2005 13:30 (eighteen years ago) link

Tough call for the street team. One the one hand they want to proclaim their success, adding "As successfully utilised by the Arctic Monkeys", and yet on the other have to go round various internet boards saying "this is something that was started by the fans. "

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 13:33 (eighteen years ago) link

BECAUSE THIS IS ILM AND PRINCESS DIANA ISN'T EVEN ACTUALLY DEAD.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 13:33 (eighteen years ago) link

this thread only has kaisers=space to show for itself. bad thread, naughty thread, in your bed

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 13:40 (eighteen years ago) link

Lynskey, the Arctic Monkeys, as well you know, are not signed to an indie label.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 20 October 2005 04:57 (eighteen years ago) link

quick, someone tell Hood

― vacuum cleaner (electricsound), Thursday, 20 October 2005 05:15 (eighteen years ago) link

Just how powerful is an indie label's street team that it can sell out tours before the band have had a record out

Dare one mention the name SUEDE here?

Is it unreasonable to be suspicious & cynical when one sees a band like this suddenly appearing everywhere? Or when one reads that guardian "movers & shakers" piece? Especially when said band seem, on the basis of listening to recordings made by them, and watching a clip of them perform to be lacking in anything to make them stand out from yer usual "indie" fluff. Oh, sorry, the singer has a strong northern accent. Apart from that, then.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 20 October 2005 07:49 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't think all this attention has to be label-driven, that's all. Press, radio etc have such a voracious appetite for new bands that they will generate buzz regardless of what the label does. As I understand it, Domino were wary of getting too much attention too soon - hence the dearth of press around the first single. I assume that the reason they kept being mentioned in that Guardian piece was because they were deemed to be the guitar band most likely to sell a lot of records next year - not the best, necessarily, but potentially the biggest. If you don't like them, fine, and you could lament the fact that there's so little competition around (again, I mean commercially rather than artistically), but where's the big conspiracy?

― Dorian Lynskey, Thursday, 20 October 2005 08:24 (eighteen years ago) link

I was having a conversation with a friend last night who was trying to promote the "really fun new bands" Arctic Monkeys [god, that name!] and Louis XIV. I expressed ambivalence verging on antipathy, - the songs I've heard from each sound truly uninteresting to me, - and he asked me why. I explained it was because I didn't like the music, but someone else mentioned that "they're overhyped".

The dude-who-liked-them said that he didn't own a radio and didn't read the music press (i have no idea how he hears about new stuff -- TV? The Guardian?), so it wasn't hype that attracted him, it was how good the stuff sounded.

So I guess there are a lot of people who just plain like them.

The other thing that's interested me re the Monkeys is the way the "internet buzz" has been talked-about, when the audioblogs I read or glance at have had almost nary a peep. (At least not until very very recently.) It illustrates how there are really distinct communities online - I remember the discussion about the non-ILM related musicblogosphere from a couple years ago, - and that the hyped-up of one part of the Web (Chad Van Gaalen, Max Geil, Devin Davis, Bishop Allen, Wolf Parade) can be entirely distinct from another.

― sean gramophone (Sean M), Thursday, 20 October 2005 08:34 (eighteen years ago) link

Remind me sometime to tell you of the music industry conspiracy which deems that only four "indie" acts will become "big" in any given year in order to fill the correct amount of press space and compilation albums...

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 20 October 2005 08:38 (eighteen years ago) link

Would "Coldplay" be mentioned in any such discourse?

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 20 October 2005 08:40 (eighteen years ago) link

They were, five years ago.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 20 October 2005 08:44 (eighteen years ago) link

Conspiracy? This is like finding truth in Nostradamus after the fact. If you can name some bands that WILL become massive due to record-company hype shenanigans but are currently unknown / doing the toilet circuit - then I'll think more of the "conspiracy" in six months time when you're proved right (if you are).

― Scepticus Maximus, Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:07 (eighteen years ago) link

most of those don't even exist yet.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:10 (eighteen years ago) link

Well, I was tipped off about the Magic Numbers by a music biz type at the start of the year, so there's your first one.

You see it all the time at The Social in Nottingham. Example: The Thrills, who played the 200-ish capacity venue while staying at the swankiest boutique hotel in town, on the strength of one #36 hit single. Racks of shiny new top-of-the-range guitars at the back of the stage, and you could see that they'd been styled. They were crap, but I left thinking "Glastonbury Other Stage, tea time slot, six months time". And lo, it came to pass.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:12 (eighteen years ago) link

Also, why do people fete, for instance, Mike Jones or The Game ("I created a buzz without a single like NWA did") for managing to create their own hype prior to their album, but for some people indie bands doing this is chopped liver? Is it because of a desire to keep indie "pure"?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:12 (eighteen years ago) link

Difference between pop kids and indie kids? At least pop kids KNOW they're being manipulated.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:13 (eighteen years ago) link

Plus, why do these hype bands have a greater level of success these days? You can't really imagine a Terris or Campag Velocet or Crashland amongst this new lot. Why? Has the NME upped its speed or what?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:14 (eighteen years ago) link

coughTHEBRAVERYcough

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:16 (eighteen years ago) link

Like I said upthread Dom, marketing is about accelerating the success of the right product, not manufacturing the success of the wrong one.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:16 (eighteen years ago) link

xpost: Coldplay supported Terris at the Nottingham Social at the beginning of 2000, when the NME were hedging their bets and heavily tipping both acts for success.

― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 20 October 2005 10:17 (eighteen years ago) link

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