The story of Sandi Thom that the papers ran with back in 2006 was one that suggested she got noticed by webcasting gigs from her Tooting flat – she claimed to have had 70,000 viewers at one point, in fact. We now know, of course, that she already had a PR company behind her, and that the whole story was carefully contrived (bandwidth costs for that kind of webcast are well beyond the budget of a supposedly penniless singer-songwriter).

But the bigger point here is: if she really was getting 70,000 people viewing her online gigs, why on earth did she sign a major label record deal? Look at what happened – the industry machinery got behind her, the single was hyped everywhere in the traditional way, got to No. 1 and then swiftly dropped out of sight, and the follow-up tanked. Sandi Thom’s career is now effectively over. Think what she could’ve done if – supposing the story of all those online viewers was true – she’d gone it alone.

PR gimmicks are risky things, but in some ways unavoidable in this media saturated age (there’s always exceptions to that begrudgingly accepted rule of course – just look at the entirely gimmick-free success of Ray Lamontagne; although a blanket TV ad campaign didn’t do too much harm there of course…) What’s crucial is that you don’t let your gimmick take over from the music. Keep your approach credible and you can pull in an audience from a quick stunt (like Thom’s webcasting story) and keep them, because you don’t exploit that instant audience fix to grab a massive record deal, thus alienating all those people who thought they discovered you organically.

The future for independent artists is all about creating a story, to lure an audience in – and keeping those new-found fans by making them feel special, part of an exclusive club, and not making them feel used by cashing in and selling their emotional investment to a faceless record company.

Kavinsky – Testarossa Autodrive

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