I think it’s interesting how when we use something everyday as a natural part of business we have a tendency to become blind to it. I my world the Internet could be this blind spot. Besides working at Seismonaut I also work with the music biz and within the last couple of years the Internet has in some respects totally changed this field of business.

Let me use my own band as example. We started out ages ago and worked our way through pubs and high schools. Our only contact with potential managers and labels would be if we where spotted on a pub (very unlikely) or if we sent a physical CD. To do that however you would need to have extensive knowledge about what, where and who could be potential partners. All of that changed with myspace.com. (One could argue that mymusic.dk and soundvenue.com did the same before, but the fact that myspace is global plus the fact that it is used by scouts as well as musicians and fans puts myspace in another, much more important category.)

About a year ago we we’re contacted by this guy called Phil who is A&R with a British label. He had stumbled across one of your songs on myspace and would like to release it in the UK. We were ecstatic – wow getting something out over there was huge! After the initial contact with Phil on Myspace a stream of events followed.

As promised the single was put out in UK and the main promotion channel used was music blogs. BBC Radio picked it up on their play list, Amnesty international invited us to contribute on their world wide sampler ”Artists for Peace” and the big music business festival EuroSonic in Groningen (NL) invited us to play the 2010 festival. Last week the largest US sports site ESPN.com sent over a contract because they wanted to use our song on their site. All of this because of a profile on myspace.

With all of this going on we wanted to shoot a video for the track. With no money but a clear idea of what we wanted and didn’t want we posted requests on relevant groups on facebook for example ”find dit film crew” and within a week we had spoken to at least ten film makers wanting to help. The music video is now done and up for play list on MTV2. Gotta love the web!

Using the web in this manner has become natural to me and I don’t notice it anymore. Like water from the tap. But it has revolutionized the way we do business and opened so many doors to people and opportunities we other wise wouldn’t have had a chance to meet.

I don’t think we really followed a clear strategy in our use of social media (bands are like that) but the simple fact that we made sure to be present in the relevant channels has made all the difference – hey maybe that’s a strategy after all!