Up-and-coming bands now flock to MySpace to showcase their music. Minneapolis rock group Quietdrive has yet to release its first album, but the band already has over 36,000 MySpace friends. More than half a million copies of their songs have been downloaded from the site.
“Dateline NBC” caught up with the band during a gig at New York’s legendary rock club CBGB’s to talk to lead singer Kevin Truckenmiller and guitarist Matt Kirby about how the Web site has boosted their popularity.
Kevin Truckenmiller, Quietdrive lead singer: We started using MySpace right before we were signed. I signed up and I didn’t really know what it was, but I knew that you could post your music on it. So I was looking into it and I was researching it a little bit and I was like, this is kind of a cool way for us to get our music across and to connect with people.
Matt Kirby, Quietdrive guitarist: We kind of made it a part of like, daily routine, you know. We would spend a couple of hours branching out to people that we couldn’t branch out to just out of Minneapolis or you know places or shows that we’d be on tour with because we never really went far out of the region, so...
Truckenmiller: When you tour, you see all of your fans every day. But when you’re not touring it’s difficult to communicate with those fans. So when we spend time writing music and then spend time just contacting our fans and talking to them through MySpace, it’s an easier way to just do that all across the world and still maintain those fans and still keep the fans interested in your music and what you’re doing.
Kirby: It worked out where it just started catching on fire and on fire… and then one day we ended up on the front page of MySpace and fans started coming in the droves. People started finally hearing our music and stuff. But we actually started out to use it as a tool to make ourselves stand out a little bit in an area where we had, you know, very little chance without a step above.
Truckenmiller: I think when you’re a band you have to have your name known to a lot of people in a lot of different ways. They have to be approached in like through their friends, through the Internet, they need to see it, they need to hear it. For them to become a complete fan, sometimes that’s what it takes. So with MySpace it’s helped us get our name out there.
Kirby: MySpace has advanced our career a lot. It’s kind of pushed the accelerator button on us. We started out before we got signed. We started using MySpace, you know, consistently and we haven’t even released our record yet. I would say it’s probably shaved a year or so off of where we would be without it. It’s been a tool and a half. (laughs)