I recently came upon the band Arctic Monkeys. I recommend them to anyone enjoying the dance rock and neo-no wave trends.

Apparently, I’m way behind on the whole Arctic Monkeys tip, as I’ve been teased by ZS and the FT has an entire op-ed piece less than a week after I first listened to their albums. Next thing you know, the FT will be drinking a Heineken and out-labeling other scenesters (Note: I do neither). The article is not a particular worthwhile read, but I include it after the jump for amusement.

Arctic Monkeys obey new laws of the jungle
By Tom Findlay and Rob Wood
Published: January 26 2006 19:40 | Last updated: January 26 2006 19:40

ImageIn its first week, Arctic Monkeys’ debut album has outsold the entire rest of the top 20 album chart combined. While this success is great for British music and the crucial independent music sector that feeds it, it comes beneath a veil of media hype.

Much of the success has been attached to the power of the internet, a tool this band was canny enough to make good use of. Using the US MySpace.com community site, the band gave away free MP3s of their tracks to a blossoming online fanbase; the very same people who ran to the shops to grab the album this week.

While the internet was part of the marketing tools used by Arctic Monkeys, it was relentless gigging that built up a loyal local following. Using old-fashioned glue and paper as much as the web, the band postered themselves around their home town of Sheffield and beyond. Like thousands of other bands, the Monkeys gave away tracks online – a reward to their fans and a promotional device for newcomers to hear what all the fuss was about.

The net enabled the band to converse with fans beyond South Yorkshire and gain a reach that would have been impossible 10 years ago, when loading a van and driving up and down the M1 was the only, cash-sapping, alternative. By the time the Monkeys played their first gig in London, they had sold out a 1,600-capacity venue without a high-profile release. This would never have happened if the band were not as good as they are, but it was the net that gave them the means to establish a rapport with fans on a colossal scale.

So talent shines through in the end. A combination of the right band and smart use of the internet can be the spark which sets things ablaze. The beauty of online promotion is that it is cheap, fast and measurable. It is more cost-effective than the manufacture of promotional CDs and the use of radio plugging, and the results can be seen as the online hits clock up. It took Oasis at least twice as long an incubation period before they went sky high.

Giving away your product might defy the rules of economics, but in the world of the internet-savvy fan it is a gesture on which dividends will be paid when the album is available to buy. It is also a way to road-test songs where the most downloaded tracks become the obvious choice for the next single.

The huge, cranky major labels have been slow to make sense of how the internet is changing the consumption of music. The profits from the million copies that the Arctic Monkeys album will undoubtedly soon sell will largely be enjoyed by the independent label, Domino Recordings. The do-it-yourself use of online promotion gives artists more power. Rather than be enslaved to the whims of major-label Artist & Repertoire men, bands can increase their fanbase online and choose who to sign with and when, if at all. If the majors had embraced digital music distribution seven years ago, that power shift might not have happened.

We believe the future of online music lies in taking the exciting parts of community sites and joining them with retail. As experience with the band Groove Armada shows, you can tour outside of major record markets in places such as Argentina or Brazil and hear 20,000 fans sing your songs despite record sales of only the odd thousand. Audiences such as these will largely have been turned on to such music from illegal peer-to-peer networks. We do not advocate piracy but believe that record labels would benefit from using online promotion creatively by, for instance, giving away singles or live tracks to generate demand for albums.

TuneTribe, the online digital music store, allows unsigned artists to sell their music without a record deal. Suddenly the traditional idea that record companies will always need to exist to market bands and manage their publishing and copyright royalties becomes more wobbly. Sites such as ours can use a laptop to record a band’s live performance and make it available as an album within hours, something that would take months for the corporate machinery of the majors.

Record labels will undoubtedly adapt to change. As long as physical formats are sold, artists will need the clout of established record labels to shift units in large volumes. But with the effectiveness of online promotion and distribution set to grow, new ways to sell music are opening up. Bands with talent like the Arctic Monkeys can blossom into great acts, while their fan base can grow rapidly with access to the tunes they love at their fingertips.

Tom Findlay is half of dance act Groove Armada and a founder of TuneTribe.com. Rob Wood is a music consultant, journalist and head of content at TuneTribe.com