Essex rock band Koopa could become the first unsigned group to land a UK top 40 hit thanks to new chart rules.
The bulk of Koopa’s followers are teenagers who are buying the single using a mobile phone rather than an online store, Mr Raymond believes. It costs £1.50 to send a text message and receive a code to download the song on a computer. “The average 16-year-old doesn’t have a credit card but they’ve got a mobile phone,” the manager explains.
Who needs a record deal anymore?
Somewhere, EMI is weeping …
Y’uh, & jimbotron likee this band – but i’m a sucker 4 folk who play the kind of punky tunes where they use cuss-words & have them cute Euro-accents. They really ARE a rockin’ teen combo!
and that’s the real reason why BIG BUSINESS is against downloading. They loose control over what people consume. The internet can be the great leveller whereby Coca Cola’s website has just as much power as a Zappa one. People dont have to go with the next big thing, they can preview, judge dismiss or discover and create something on their own. How can already clueless record companies predict what will be the next big thing now? Usually what they did was make product and shove a bunch of money in marketing and watch people pick it up. Things can change.
Same with movie downloading. Do you think Directors like David Lynch are really going to suffer boxoffice-wise because of it? No, the movies that are going to suffer are the crap that nobody wanted to see in the first place. Those disposible films which come and go and make a tidy profit. People will still go see the films they care about or films that are going to be aood, yet so little of Hollywood isnt worth a shit. Executives are just lazy and sleazy (that’s obvious!)- Now they cant afford to be. If Big Business wants to survive, they’ll either start working for a change, coming out with valuable ART or they’ll begin to privatize the internet: http://www.gcn.com/print/vol18_no36/894-1.html