A British invasion for the digital age

LONDON: On Monday night in San Francisco, an American audience is scheduled to get its first live look at a British band that music industry promoters bill as the latest in a long line of proud musical exports that began with the Beatles more than 40 years ago.

The back story for the Arctic Monkeys is vaguely reminiscent of the Fab Four - four lads from a gritty city in northern England - but the resemblance ends there. These youths are from the all-digital generation, born and bred on the Internet.

For a business reeling from the effects of piracy and a dearth of successful international acts, a promising band like the Arctic Monkeys should be welcome.

Privately, however, some record company executives express a bit of ambivalence. Their unease stems not from the band itself but from the way it burst onto the British music scene. The Arctic Monkeys bypassed the record labels - for a time, at least - and used the Internet to help generate a following and to distribute their own music.

To some in the business, the experience shows how traditional functions of the record label - not just distributing CDs but finding and developing talent - are being changed by the Internet. Music companies are losing some control to specialists in online promotion, or even to the artists themselves.

\"Bands have a much greater ability to get themselves out to the public, gain some sort of recognition and credibility and then sign with a record label,\" said Guy Moot, managing director of EMI Music Publishing, which owns the rights to the Arctic Monkeys\\\' music. \"The development part is also happening much more outside the record companies.\"

Only a handful of musicians, including bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in New York, have managed to move on from giving away their music on the Internet to broader success. Nonetheless, scores have recorded their own music and posted it on \"social networking\" sites like Myspace.com in the hope of being discovered.

\"If it were just about the Internet, there would be 600,000 bands out there that would have been signed by now, and they\\\'re not,\" said Simon Gavin at Polydor Records, part of Universal Music Group.

The Arctic Monkeys, ages 19 and 20, have demonstrated that they understand the power of the Internet they grew up with as a tool for communication and marketing.

The band was formed in 2003 in Sheffield, once the heart of the British steel industry but now, like many cities in northern England, a postindustrial capital of pubbing and clubbing. The band - Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Andy Nicholson and Matt Helders - toured the region extensively, giving hundreds of live shows, plugging its Web site and giving away free \"demo\" CD singles.

On their Web site, theArctic Monkeys also gave away full tracks of some of their songs and encouraged fans to share them with friends, an activity the music industry considers a criminal violation of copyright. They gained a following on British online music forums like Drowned in Sound, and word spread via sites like Myspace.com.

In time, \"they had every A&R man in Europe chasing them,\" one record company executive said, referring to \"artist and repertoire,\" the industry\\\'s term for talent-spotting.

The Arctic Monkeys resisted until last summer, then signed with a London-based independent label, Domino, with the music publishing rights going to EMI.

The free downloads were then phased out by Domino, and the Arctic Monkeys began to look more like a conventional product of the music industry machine. Their songs found a place on British radio, building anticipation for the eventual release of their album, \"Whatever People Say I Am, That\\\'s What I\\\'m Not.\"

\"People seem to be looking at the Arctic Monkeys as some sort of lab experiment, in terms of getting a band out there so quickly,\" said Jonny Bradshaw, product manager for the Arctic Monkeys at Domino. \"What gets lost is that it\\\'s this great rock \\\'n\\\' roll band that has touched a nerve with a lot of people.\"

While Bradshaw attributed the band\\\'s success to old-fashioned virtues of good music, knowing the powers of online buzz may have helped, too. Weeks before \"Whatever People Say I Am\" was set to be released n January, its contents had leaked out on the Internet, and some in the music business suspect that was no accident.

\"I don\\\'t know how that happened,\" Bradshaw said, though he conceded that the leak did not appear to have hurt sales. Domino moved up the release date of the album by one week, generating more publicity, and it sold about 360,000 copies in its first seven days, the best performance by a debut album in Britain.

Once a band has been discovered, the Internet is also playing a role in developing the relationship with fans, with firms that specialize in online publicity grabbing some of the action. They work with Internet music sites to plant stories about a band and can develop \"viral\" tactics - involving no conventional advertising - to spread the word.

The virtual world creates opportunities for promoters that might be difficult to match off line. Hyperlaunch New Media, an online public relations firm in Bristol, England, that works with musicians, developed a viral video game for one client, a satirical British rap group named Goldie Lookin\\\' Chain. It allows fans of the group to roll a virtual joint of marijuana; 300,000 people have played since the summer of 2004.

\"The Internet lays the groundwork,\" said Don Jenkins, managing director of Hyperlaunch. \"It creates a much closer relationship between bands and fans. You need that because the days when people walked into a shop and took a £15 punt on an album are gone.\"

数字时代的“不列颠入侵”

周一晚的旧金山，一位美国观众将第一次去看一个英国乐队的演唱会，业界推手们把这支乐队称为延续了Beatles 40年前开创的伟大的音乐出口传统的最新代表。

Arctic Monkeys的封底故事上我们可以依稀看到the Fab Four的影子——那是四个来自英格兰北部一个粗砺的城市四个小伙子——但他们之间也只有这点相像。Arctic Monkeys的年轻成员都属于数字化一代，生于网络，长于网络。

对于深陷盗版和缺乏成功的国际巨星的唱片业界来说，像Arctic Monkeys这样有前途的乐队是最受青睐的。

但是一些唱片公司官员们私下里表现出了一点矛盾。他们的担心并非来自乐队本身，而是源于他们现身英国音乐界的方式。Arctic Monkeys没有委身于任何一家音乐厂牌——至少在那段时间里没有——他们运用网络发布自己的音乐并赢得了众多拥趸。

对业界的部分人来说，Arctic Monkeys的经历预示着唱片公司的那些诸如寻找与培养天才的传统功能正在被互联网步步瓦解。唱片公司的阵地正被在线营销专家甚至是歌手自己不断蚕食。

EMI公司董事经理Guy Moot说：“乐队们在自我推销与赢得认同方面已经拥有了一个相比与唱片公司签约的传统方式更加强大的新方式。乐队的成长与发展对唱片公司的依赖也越来越少。”

只有像来自纽约的Clap Your Hands Say Yeah等少数几个乐队从在互联网上免费发布音乐走向了更大的成功。数十个其他乐队自己制作唱片并把它们放在Myspace等“社会性网络”上，期望着有人来发现自己。

环球唱片旗下Polydor Records的Simon Gavin说：“就互联网而言，总共有600000家值得签约乐队，可现实他们并未选择这样。”

年龄在19到20岁之间的Arctic Monkeys成员说，他们了解互联网，这种伴随着他们成长的工具在交流与营销方面的巨大力量。

这支乐队在2003年成立于谢菲尔德这个曾是英国钢铁业中心的城市，如今，谢菲尔德像其他很多英格兰北部城市一样，充斥着后工业时代的酒吧与俱乐部。Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Andy Nicholson和Matt Helders等经常在这一地区巡回演出，宣传自己的网站，赠送免费的Demo单曲。

Arctic Monkeys在自己的网站上张贴了他们部分歌曲的完整版本，并且鼓励乐迷们与朋友们分享这些音乐，这种行为却曾被音乐业界看作对版权的肆意践踏。他们在Drowned in Sound等英国音乐论坛上为自己赢得了一大帮支持者，相关的宣传在Myspace之类的网站上不断扩展开去。

一个唱片公司官员说，如今“全欧洲的A&R都在为他们而疯狂”。A&R指的是“歌手与曲目(Art and Repertoire)”，这是业界在论及追踪天才时的术语。

直到去年夏天，Arctic Monkeys才与伦敦一个独立厂牌Domino签约，同时将音乐版权交给了EMI。

Domino随后中止了他们音乐的免费下载，Arctic Monkeys也开始将目光转向那些传统的音乐产品。他们选择在电台上播放自己的音乐，为即将发新的新专辑《Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not》做宣传。

Domino公司为Arctic Monkeys设的产品经理Jonny Bradshaw说：“人们把Arctic Monkeys看作是一个研究推广乐队到底可以有多快的实验室产品，他们却没有注意到这样一个伟大的摇滚乐队已经抓住了很多人的神经。”

Bradshaw把乐队的成功归于好音乐的传统美德的同时他也没有忘记网络讨论的功劳。在“Whatever People Say I Am”这张专辑于一月发布前的几周，其部分内容已经泄露到网络上，部分业界人士怀疑这件事并非只是一个“事故”。

Bradshaw在承认泄露事件没有影响销量的同时也说道：“我不知道这是怎么回事。”Domino公司借此把发布日期提前一周以争取更多的关注，最后的发布首周销量为360000份，这也是英国历史上销量最大的音乐处女作专辑。

对一些在线营销有独到之处的公司来说，互联网同样是他们为新发掘的乐队发展fans的平台。他们通过音乐网站施展的病毒式宣传能够在不依赖任何传统广告的情况下将一个乐队推向全世界。

网上的虚拟世界为人们提供了传统线下营销无法匹敌的机会。为音乐家们服务的英国布里斯托的在线公关公司Hyperlaunch New Media为他们的客户——一个叫Goldie Lookin’ Chain的Rap团体制作了一个病毒式的游戏，在游戏里，乐迷们可以组织一场虚拟的大麻聚会，自2004年夏天以来，已经有超过300000人玩过这个游戏。

Hyperlaunch公司董事经理Don Jenkins说：“互联网为我们提供了一个良好的基础。它大大拉近了乐队和乐迷之间的距离。如今你必须依赖网络才能取得成功，因为过去那种人们走进唱片店花15镑买一张专辑的日子早已一去不返。”