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The world wide web is about the farthest point away from rock you can get and not be Third Eye Blind. Really, there's such a huge unglamorous, capitalist, lonely... unrock vibe to the Internet. Yet every single band there is or ever was has a site, if not maintained by themselves then by a fan.
Including us.
And I don't think it buys anything.
Some of the sites are really well done. Foo Fighters, who obviously have help from someone who knows what they're doing, have a great site. But it isn't very rock. RHCP also have a well designed and skillfully crafted site (winner of the MTV best site award, or something like that). But it's about as rock as Yahoo!.
Furthermore, these sites aren't really there to help the artists' careers. Beyond selling the occasional extra record or T-shirt, these sites really won't help the band that much. Everyone knows who they are, and I didn't have to do a search on either band to see if their sites were under their names.
There's no contact to these sites, however. Very little bridges the gap between rockstar and fan like the web was supposed to do. You get the occasional "Hey, this is Flea from the road" type updates, but now all the sites have those, and you get the feeling you're part of a demographic as you read them.
There has been no "Blair Witch" for bands on the web. No one has really made it to the national scene by selling millions, or even thousands of records online. Not for lack of trying, the web is littered with bands and band sites and band pages. They all look a lot like ours. News. CDs. Shows. Pictures. MP3.
And it isn't like the web isn't helpful to bands. Some bands we know have sold records through the web, again, us included. But no one is coming to the shows because they found the site. And no one is going to the site because they liked the show. Our web fans are checking us out on the web. Our other fans are coming to the shows.
I'm afraid the two won't ever meet.
Our site gets about 200 unique visitors per month. Not a lot really, but when you consider we've been holed up in the studio since we've had a site (almost as long as since we've been a band, for that matter), it's pretty good. The MP3 gets spidered a lot and gets the most hits out of anything. If you have a band site, you should have your stuff up there on MP3.
But like I said, the people who have been to the shows aren't going to the web and vice versa. We know this because we talk to both sets. Mostly what the web has brought to us is scams, people looking to make a quick buck by listing us in their "essential local music guide" or offering management or recording services. What we're not getting, what we need, is synergy.
I think the day is coming when bands will no longer need record companies, and will be able to sustain a career with the Internet. I just hope I'm not a complete geek before that happens.
We have completed our demo and we took it to Austin for SxSW. We're going back into the studio in May and will be playing shows again in May. We plan to play a often as we can over the summer, perhaps even look for management. But don't send us scammy management emails, okay?
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In three years, brilliant will be the biggest band in the world. Until then, they're ours, giving weekly Friday night shows in the palatial Intrepid Media rec room.
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