Tuesday 12 May 2009

Twitter: Take 2

I posted a few days ago about music related users of Twitter (Musical Twitters). Following this post a number of bands sent me messages and/or started following my Tweets. Good on them! This shows an understanding of how the whole Twitter thing works and deserves to be rewarded. So here they are listed below. They are not all my cup of tea and I haven't followed all of them in return but I felt they deserved to be noted somewhere for their effort. :-)

4Hours: These chaps were the first off the mark and sent me a message that linked me to their website. I like their site. Good visual identity and smart logo. They describe themselves as a "funk rock trio". I must admit to being partial to trios (in particular Rush). I think the fact that there are only three musicians means there is no room for passengers - everyone has to pull their weight.

thelostofficial: These guys (or this guy?) was next to get in touch - again giving a website where you can hear samples of their/his music. The MySpace account lists Rush as an influence which is a good sign. :-)

Then some people started following my Twitter updates:

soundzeroband: Theses guys claim Led Zeppelin as an influence. Check out their website for more details. (And note - another trio!)

rock_music_: Not a band but a campaign. However they seem to be using Twitter to post music news.

And last (for the moment) but not least:

theauroraprjct: A progressive band from Holland who describe themselves as sounding like Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree - impressive role models! They link to a website where you can find out more about them and hear some of their stuff. They deserve a special mention for a tweet that links to a free download of a track, Photonic Reunion, and for sending me a message to say thank you for following them. They suggested I review their music which I intend to do in a future post (and future tweets of course).

So well done to all these chaps for being on the Twitter ball. Any other groups want to reveal their Twitter presence?

4 comments:

JT said...

Yesterday, Sofia Talvik released a new single to her Twitter followers for the "price" of a single tweet. If I hadn't already signed up for Twitter a few weeks ago, that would likely have made me do it. Even if the music isn't to your taste, I think, like you said, that this is the type of initiative that deserves to be rewarded. If record labels were smart, they would be all over this sort of thing - but thankfully there are independent musicians who do it anyway. ;)

David said...

I read an article recently that said record companies are now expecting bands to do a lot more of this sort of thing themselves. Where they used to sign and then market up and coming bands to help them build a fanbase, they now want and existing fanbase, built through Myspace, Twitter, etc. before they'll even look at a band.

Seems a bit short sighted to me. Already a number of bigish artists have realised they can do well without a label thank you very much. If a label isn't providing value added, bands might as well keep doing it themselves.

JT said...

Has any other industry reacted so poorly to the Internet? I would hope that if an artist is able to create a decent following on their own, they would be smart enough to stay away from these dinosaurs.

I found another cool band to follow on Twitter. Moonalice has actually been "Twittercasting" (so portmanteriffic - I love it!) some of their concerts, i.e. uploading MP3s of the songs in pseudo-real-time. I haven't witnessed one of these events live, but I'm hoping they'll do it again.

David said...

"Has any other industry reacted so poorly to the Internet?"

Unfortunately I think the answer is yes - the film industry is probably worse. Thank goodness TV seems to be getting the hang of it with things like the BBC iPlayer.