How To Have A No.1 Hit Part 2 - The No.1 Album
Here's a little quiz. See these people above? Recognise all of them? That's right, Take That are on the left, and the lady on the right? Well that's Kate Walsh, but not the Kate Walsh from that TV show Grey's Anatomy, no. This is a different Kate Walsh, a singy one.
Anyway, can you guess which of these acts has the most popular album for download (according to iTunes)? What's that you say? Take That? WRONG! It's Kate. And seeing as we've already explained how to top the singles charts (it was here, if you missed it), we've gone off to examine how she achieved this feat without having to 'generate a high media profile' and stuff like that.
RULE 1: Be good.
OK, this is the most meaningless rule of all, cos none of us can properly gauge our own abilities, and if you ask someone else whether you're any good at something, you have to work out whether you believe them or not. They might just be jealous - or whatever the opposite of jealous is - and tailoring their views accordingly.
Kate told the Times: "I was a classical pianist until the age of 18. I never thought I could have a career as a female singer-songwriter."
See? Even SHE had no idea what she could do. This is where honest friends come in massively handy.
RULE 2: Get your tunes together.
Kate made her album at a friend's house, using curtains for sound-baffling and a shoebox for a microphone (or something). Her friend is called Tim, and so Kate's album is called 'Tim's House'. Here she is performing 'Fireworks'...
RULE 3: Do not get CDs made.
This is an unnecessary vanity. If you really wish to kick the legs out from under THE MUSIC BUSINESS, you need to make your album available on download only. THIS WILL SHOW THEM ALL.
RULE 2: Do not chase the false-popularity of having many MySpace friends.
Some bands have tens of thousands of MySpace friends, and yet they do not sell tens of thousands of records. This may be because befriending someone on MySpace and spending money on their music are not the same thing.
(NOTE: If you look at , for example, you will note that the vast majority of MySpace users have decided they better things to do than try and befriend us. This is JUST FINE, as it means we get ALL THE BEST AND CLEVEREST PEOPLE and not the COMMON RABBLE. So ner.)
Kate: "The web response is amazing. Someone I've never met called me the new Jane Austen."
This quote also proves that MySpace people, while lovely and all that, are not always very clever. You ask 19th Century *novelist* Jane Austen, if you don't believe me....
RULE 4: Show your wares.
DO make use of MySpace (or Be-Bo/Facebook) and YouTube (or similar) to get your music up on the internet. If you have followed Rule 1, this will cause some kind of massive wave of feverish web-chatter which will send hordes of people to their favourite internet songshop and everything will be great. But you have to follow Rule 1 to a massive degree. This is why the following Kate quote may not be all that helpful...
Kate: "I just got my music out there, it's pretty easy. Anyone can do it."
Yeah. What's stopping YOU, lazybones?
RULE 6: Be prepared for the backlash.
Us internet people, The Dark Spider-Riders Of Web-Mordor (as we see things), or Dorcs (to everyone else), are a chippy bunch. If you, or someone on your behalf, makes any claim to have used the internet in order to help you sell records, we will come GUNNING for you.
Remember how everyone got in a tizz because Sandi Thom's peeps claimed she was doing massively popular web-gigs from a basement in Tooting, and apparently she wasn't? That was weird, wasn't it? I mean surely the main reason to slam Sandi Thom (apart from her 'creative' re-telling of the history of popular culture) is that she is rubbish. The fact that she's rubbish and her PR people are liars is just by the by.
Same with the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen. Some people claimed they were marketed by the internet, then some other people told those people off, then a third bunch of people came along and tried to broker some kind of peace deal by claiming that talent will have its day, and everyone started talking at once and the internet glowed HOT with rabid opinion for weeks.
RULE 7: Carpe diem (seize the diem).
If you've managed to sell a lot of downloaded albums in a very short space of time, and you've overtaken famous people whose records have been out for a while, TELL EVERYONE!
Kate: "It's amazing. It's great news for all the people who can have the confidence to go out there and do it themselves."
"You don't need loads of money to make an album and they don't need the backing of a record label. There's no advertising or marketing involved, you don't go on how much money has been spent."
I tell you what, now the secret's out, next week's album rundown is going to look VERY different, don't you think?
============================================
Comments
interesting...
why was there 2 rule 2s, and no rule 5?
[It was a mistake at first, then it made me laugh. Now it is LEGEND. Something like that, anyway - Fraser]
haiiiii
...........BONd
"If you, or someone on your behalf, makes any claim to have used the internet in order to help you sell records, we will come GUNNING for you."
What does this mean? And if it means people would be upset with you, why would people be annoyed or upset by someone using the internet to sell records?
[It means being upset, yes. It's just a reference to the fact that as soon as the newspaper claim that someone has built up a grass-roots following on the internet, like they did with Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys, nasty bloggers will start moaning about record company hype and how it's all a big con. That's what the internet is like. Silly really. - Fraser]
Why does everybody call Take That? Why don't you call Robbie 4 once? Do you know why shes not famous 'cause she's not a man and is not fit!
[And yet she is selling more downloads than Take That are at the moment. Isn't that interesting? You're right, though, she's also selling more than Robbie, more than Fall Out Boy, more than Amy Winehouse, more than the Fray (I just checked the Top Ten, sorry. Take That are a good point of comparison because they are so obviously selling a LOT of records at the moment, that's all. It makes Kate Walsh's achievement seem even bigger. - Fraser]
You've got a very naive view of the 'industry', like the sort of stuff people with no clue spout out in their simple minded idealism. NME always go on about that sort of thing although they know it isn't true.
An example to dispell your point. Lily Allen is manufactured in that she doesn't write her own music/is the daughter of Keith Allen and went to public school. However salt of the earth 'owight mayte' she tries to come off across she's got loads of money = can buy her way to sucess. The Monkeys were different but that was an exception, I don't think something like that'll happen in a long time.
[Even if Lily Allen had all the money in the world, that wouldn't prove that she had spent it to "buy her way to success". You're only saying that because you personally don't happen to like her music. People who don't like the Arctic Monkeys claim someone else wrote their songs for them. It's a bitter world. Which is why it's sometimes better to be a little celebratory, even if it does make people think you're naive. - Fraser]