Stumbling upon Lily@myspace.com

I came across this article in last weeks Observer Music monthly magazine. Pictures of Lily A story of the power of networks, the internet and a new socio-economic model hard at work

Miranada Sawyer writes,

Last month I used my column in this magazine to bemoan today's lack of proper pop stars, the ones who talk the talk as well as walk the tight-trousered walk, who know that the music's only part of the job and personality's the rest. Anyway, just days later, the editor called me up, all excited, and said, 'I think I've found you one!'.

Lily Allen was his answer to my rant, recommended to him by an OMM work-experience girl who had found her MySpace site . Lily had put up four of her chirpy pop-ska songs, and, within weeks, they'd spread like internet flu. She now has a staggering 24,932 friends on her page, Parlophone has rush-released her first single, 'LDN', and the limited edition seven-inch is reselling for £40 on eBay. Lily is a genuine, no PR, punters-love-it success, which is fantastic, but, even more promisingly, her blog is hilarious...

So here is lily

'Rudely awoken by the radio and that trollop Edith Bowman warbling on about how she is just BESTEST friends with just about anyone, so long as they are in a band and preferably wearing skinny jeans and stripey cardigans, and how the Magic Numbers are just absolutely brilliant, AGAIN.'

I listened to her songs, and thought fabulous.

So as of today Lilys 4 songs loaded up on myspace have been played

Smile: 122,740
Little Things: 387,986
Everything just Works: 264,726
Knock 'em Out: 146,930

Now out of that lot, will develop a niche mass audience. If Lily's music touches people, then the community of fans and advocates will grow.

It sort of turns A&R on its head.

Myspace the final word

Lily Allen has already been called the poster-girl of the MySpace generation - in fact, OMM wrote about her briefly two months ago with reference to the revolutionary community networking site

She thinks that 'a lot of labels - not necessarily mine - are run by older people and they're scared of it.' In fact, Parlophone had signed Allen before she put her profile up on the site - but it was her idea to do so and 'no one could have anticipated the level of attention I'm getting now, and that's purely because of the internet.

Lily Allen music

More reading:
The holes in the digital cheese
Darwinism rudely arrives in our media ecology
The battle for my(voice)space

Comments

[Andrew Missingham]

I think the real change will come when older musicians (who have had one go round on the music biz carousel) are out of contract. The standard "rights grab" at contract stage might have to get a bit smarter, leading to higher quality rights exploiters being rewarded and leaving marketable unexploited IP. That's got to be good for the industry in the long term.

I met up with one such (platinum selling) musician/composer last week. He said that if he'd be out of contract now, this is the way he'd go, putting a bespoke team together, and licensing, rather than transferring rights.

[alan moore]

Thank you, Andrew

Really interesting. :-)

How long to you think it will take for the pendulum to swing?

[Andrew Missingham]

I think it's going to be like lots of this stuff - It'll need just a small handful (Gnarls Barkley/Crazy Frog/Lily Allen/Sandi Thom) style to prove that it works, then things will move quickly. I'm no soothsayer, but I think that it will be before England win the world cup...

[alan moore]

Dear Andrew,

There is always hope :-)

[Erkin]

I'm addicted to Lily Allen music. I love her music, my favourite song is Little Things!:) Have u listened to her song, Littlest Things? It's great, isn't it?

[alan moore]

Erkin I have the album and we listen to it all the time