Since the Pixies reunion tour wound down last year, guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer Dave Lovering have been busy working on their new band project. Entitled The Everybody they quietly released a nine-track album called Avatar (timely) before Christmas.
As well as regular download versions, they are also offering a deluxe package with a twist. For $40 (€27.83) you get the album in lossless FLAC format, bonus songs and videos but most importantly, royalty-free stems of each song with the legal right to create new music or remixes from the band’s work.You can sell them commercially if you like or you can submit your music back to Joey and Dave via Soundcloud for the opportunity to be included in the second side of a vinyl package called The Everybody Else later in the year. Now, the name makes sense. More info at theeverybody.com.
These Pixies guys aren’t the only ones experimenting with online submissions as it was announced that annoying gossip blogger Perez Hilton is to team up with pop choreographer Jamie King, American Idol creator and entertainment management mogul Simon Fuller in a bid to bring us “The Boy Band for the next generation”. Groan.
Using the website boybandsearch.com, the trio are looking for boys between the ages of 13 and 21 who are great singers and dancers to create three one-minute videos and submit it to the site. One video will be a dance audition, one will be a up-tempo song and of course, in the grand tradition of boy band clichés, the last will be a slow-tempo audition. The sycophantic Perez had this positive message to pass along to adolescent males: “We don’t want any ugly ones… That shouldn’t discourage people from auditioning. We really wanna see everyone. [But] we don’t want anyone that’s, like, hideous. We want five Justin Timberlakes.”
Away from manufactured boy bands, we have a fine example of a UK band who got themselves noticed by a major label in a new way. Using the UK-based slicethepie.com, Yorkshire indie-folk band Scars On 45 secured £15,000 (€17,000) funding from their fanbase towards album recording in return for a copy of the album and a possible return on investment.
Well those committed fans must have felt some vindication recently when it was announced that the band were to be signed to a worldwide deal with Atlantic/ Chop Shop Records. This meant each fan who invested shares in the band was bought out at a 50% premium to the market price. Not only do the band they love get a chance to do things on a global scale but the fans get some financial kickback from it too.
Features
Fri, Jan 22, 2010