For the past couple of nights, the most talked about band of the year, Arctic Monkeys, have blown the roof off the Enmore Theatre in Sydney. The band's rise to indie fame via the internet has been widely celebrated, but behind the hype you have to wonder -- are the Monkeys a freak phenomenon of the net and has anything in the music industry really changed?
For the past couple of nights, the "most talked about band of the year", Arctic Monkeys, have played a two-gig residency at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney and -- according to fans, anyway -- blown the roof off the venue.
These shows have brought the four-piece's very successful first Australian tour to an end in style (and then some). Indeed, to quote one online comment, the gig rated as the "best live show I've seen forever... saw the Strokes in the same week and the Monkeys blew them away... THE FUTURE!".
The band's widely reported rise to indie fame and stardom via the medium of the internet has been well-documented and much celebrated, but behind the rock hype you have to wonder -- are the Monkeys a freak phenomenon of the net and has anything in the music industry really changed?
The true band of the moment, the Monkeys have been fettered with hype and praise not seen, since, well -- the last band you'd care to recall to have received such positive press. As Rolling Stone wrote, not "since Oasis first lumbered onstage in the Nineties has England's already hyperbolic press worked itself into the kind of critical lather that has greeted Arctic Monkeys".
It is said that the band's meteoric rise to next-big-thing status (and in less than a year) was due to them giving away demos to fans at early gigs. These limited edition tracks were dispersed readily by music-sharing fans online -- something for which the band don't even appear to take any credit.
As their expansive and well-maintained Wikipedia entry states: "When asked about the popularity of the band's MySpace site in an interview with Prefix Magazine, the band pointed out that they did not even know what MySpace was, and that the site had originally been created by their fans. `[When we went number one in England] we were on the news and radio about how MySpace has helped us. But that's just the perfect example of someone who doesn’t know what the **** they’re talking about. We actually had no idea what it was.'"
The media bandwagon has jumped onto these intriguing elements of the band's ascendancy in the rock pantheon. After all, everyone loves an underdog. And here was a young band who refused to play by the industry rules. A bunch of teenagers who started a garage band in the north of England. Who gave away their music for free. Who resisted -- at least initially -- signing themselves to a record deal. Whose popularity was assured and achieved by a new generation of music fans -- net-savvy teenagers and young adults who spread their love for the band online, thus providing Arctic Monkeys with an ever-widening audience. As the media told it (and sold it), this was music for the people, by the people. This phenomenon resulted in the Monkeys' first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, becoming England's fastest-selling debut album ever.
In line with this rhetoric is an assumption that anyone can now do this: that the user-controlled environment of the internet has enabled new distribution channels for media and content. While there is certainly an element of truth to this, really -- not anyone can do this.
A recent online article by Elizabeth Holmes, "Bands find large Web fanbase doesn't equal big money", points out the number of barriers that artists come up against in the pursuit of online success. In her piece, Holmes focuses on fledgling Washington-based rock duo The Scene Aesthetic and details their difficulties in getting ahead.
The band's MySpace site has attracted 2.3 million visitors and 124,000 "friends". Their album has been listened to 1.3 million times and one of their video clips has been watched over half a million times. But, before you start calling the pair "the new Arctic Monkeys", Holmes relates that while the Scene Aesthetic "is getting the kind of recognition in the virtual world that few acts can dream of offline", they "don't earn any money from the millions of clicks. Fans can't download the music from these sites, but they can listen or watch free as many times as they like... the pair of vocalists are scraping by and sleeping on fans' basement floors".
Arctic Monkeys' success has certainly perpetuated the DIY myth, but even with them, once the band really started to be noticed, the "independent" side of things, as always, started to fall away. The band did sign with a label and the attendant lucrative licensing deals.
And though the Monkeys' music may still be shared online illegally by their fans, chances are that these days most people become acquainted with the band and their music through the attention and distribution of the mainstram media.
Their songs are played on corporate radio stations. Their story is told in the mainstream music press. Their clips appear on television and their posters hang on the walls of record stores all around the world.
Certainly our music purchasing and listening habits are changing because of the internet. But -- the wheels of the industry machine haven't stopped turning and churning out product, and youth culture is still being exploited, imitated, packaged and sold by the establishment.
Ironically, the fan comment I quoted from at the outset highlights this: "best live show I've seen forever... saw the Strokes in the same week and the Monkeys blew them away... THE FUTURE!".
A few years ago, the most hyped band on the planet was actually the Strokes. The new-wave five-piece were definitely the "it" band of the early milennium and acclaimed as the "saviours of rock", along with the White Stripes and the Vines. Now, whilst still enjoying much success, the Strokes have been relegated to the B-circuit by the hype machine.
So -- what fate awaits Arctic Monkeys? The future indeed.