Hey Lou,

I play with Last.fm myself, but haven’t signed up or read through their terms and all yet. Did you happen to see if artists have ever had trouble with listeners trying to link their band to artists that aren’t so similar? I suppose that they haven’t any real way to monitor or enforce who listens to what… but I’d be curious to see if they have a means of addressing that. The best thing that artists should do is get some of their biggest fans (a street team) to sign up and really fill out their page with appropriate information, and to begin listening to the Coldplays and all.

I get the general idea here, but I think there’s a slight flaw in the logic, notwithstanding the figures you came up with – which do seem to bear the theory out.

The way I see it, Coldplay, being thousands of times more popular (at the moment) than say Woody Guthrie, probably also has 1000 more bands associated with them on last.fm, so the listener base is shared over a much larger set of bands. The more obscure the artist, the less they will be added as an association. If you’re the only band associated with The Butthole Surfers (for example), even though it’s going to be a much smaller listener-base than Coldplay, you’re going to get 100% of the “bands that sound similar” traffic. No? A smaller cake, but a larger slice…

There must be some middle ground, but I’m not sure I’m going to be putting Coldplay down as a band that sounds similar to Nothing Concrete. I’d not only be putting myself in the mix with hundreds of bands that probably DO sound like Coldplay, but I’d end up disappointing both their fans, and mine!

Hey April,

I’ve actually never heard of any band trying to game the system in this way, it was just an interesting idea I had after looking at the data. Kind of like a Google Bomb for band promotion.

Fergus, you’re exactly right that there are also advantages to being a bigger fish in a smaller pond so to speak and most importantly gaming the system will probably result in frustrating a lot of people. I should have made it more clear that my closing comment about giving away Coldplay cds was just a bit of a “what if?” thought.

Lou,
My sound is like “The Beatles” this sound is not current but still loved…
Any suggestions for me?
Any new listeners is a good thing since I am managing myself and working a full time job and phew…
Regards,
Will Weckel

Hey Will,

Sounding like The Beatles can only be a good thing.

We are an Internet Radio Station “www.rocketradio2.com”. The internet radio stations are a huge way to get new indie bands into the main stream market. We have a band “Stands With Fists” that is on our station. I was floored by the amount of emails I get asking for more information about this band.I do get emails about all the others but I would say a ratio of 5-1 about Stands With Fists. I took a different direction with this band and i am now the booking agent for them. Anyway I would like to encourage all bands to sign up on as many internet radio stations as they can. You can go as far as asking them to email you there charts. Almost all stations have charts. I know allot don’t pay Royalties but you should look past this and use this as a great marketing tool. You should also always include a voice over stating “This is Blah Blah with your band and you are listening to Blah Blah” We love that. We are in the process of doing a few more stations at this time. We have a great time doing this and hope to hear you all soon.

Nate
http://www.Rocketradio2.com
Nate@rocketradio2.com
http://www.myspace.com/standswithfiststheband