spring a leak

it’s spring in boston finally.
and manners has leaked.
o well.
we would really like to thank Pop Sense and all the other blogs for not posting links to where it is being shared. after all, if you really want it and you know how to use the innernets, you can find it. but it’s really really cool that bloggers are respecting us and encouraging people to buy the album in a couple weeks. whether or not they received cease-and-desist letters or not, we appreciate their enthusiasm and help.

speakin of blogs, we really owe a lot to them. from the ones that love us to the ones that hate us and all the anonymous commentators in between, i sometimes doubt whether we would have played for as many people as we have and we definitely would not have reached as many ears. it sucks we can really only pay them back through “exclusives” whether it’s interviews or mp3′s and that’s assuming they deem it worthy of their blog in the first place let alone that nothing is really exclusive on the internet (streaming? hmmm… Download Helper via Firefox anyone? everything is embedded and easily yours aka not exclusive to the website). i guess the hope is that the collective community of musicians pays back the community of bloggers that advertise them by bringing hits that in turn into paychecks from adverts.

maybe labels should develop a blogging outlet that enables users to have access to more material for legal posting and sharing in turn for a percentage of website advertising revenue. that’ll never happen.

one idea that will happen, and in my opinion is pretty genius, is this new site oak.fm. full disclosure: the founders are my friends (boston is a small town) and i dj’ed their launch party, but either way i really think this is gonna take off. the idea is basically a complete social-music networking aggregator. kind of like elbows or hype machine for sites like myspace and purevolume and even facebook mixed with google analytics. for a fan it consolidates all these outlets and for a band it’s absolutely AMAZING because it lets you see such comprehensive statistics as where and how many streams from each site you are getting as well as where people are talking about you or which websites are you more successful in. basically it will replace the archaic, out-of-touch, and expensive nielsen Soundscan.

if you dont know what soundscan is, it’s a regional-market based album sales report that is really handy for booking agents so they can see what cities your band is selling best in and therefore figure out appropriate routing and venues for you to play. what oak.fm is gonna do is give a more relevant picture of where you fanbase REALLY is, on their computer and any indie band with out a booking agent will be able to route really smart effective tours.
this is just one of the brilliant sides to the site, and although it hasnt launched yet. i can’t see this not being a huge asset to the new music industry model that is forming as we speak/type.

so anyways, please pre-order the album?
cheers bloggers, we owe you one.

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