www.themusicnetwork.com/music-charts

I am amazed at this as there is not even a sniff of indies anywhere. This tells me that anyone plugging
records on indie labels to radio is wasting their time and time has come when indies need to get together
to utilise the online space as the mainstream media are just not that into you.
Even more worrying is the total domination by American or international acts in the ARIA charts. It is so
bad that we have a seperate Australian music chart. Is there any point in releasing records these days ?

The problem remains exactly as it has been KZ - how to expose great new music in a way which attracts sales as well as interest. None of us has successfully created a new model yet. Don't complain about the situation; change it.

I don't think anyone wants to create a new model. In the past there was a vibrant independent label
scene that brought new music to the masses. From the 70s there was JK's label, and a ton of small labels
who brought us Linda Lewis, Tina Charles etc.
In the 80s it was heavily dominated by the majors but at least they were very progressive and diverse.
We still had strong independents though like Mute, Blanco Y Negro and even PWL.
The 90s there was the dance scene which was dominated by indies until the majors stepped in and basically
screwed it up. You might want to read about 4Liberty Records experience with Sony.
Indie labels introduce new music and have been able to break them. Now radio is not really worth bothering
with unless you are a major and I can't remember a situation in the past quite like this.

As for changing things, don't worry JK, I am not lying down moaning about it. What I have observed is a
strong growth area between videos (personal and professional) and success. Videos convert well online
and online advertising will fuel this growth but it will be based around video ads.

But of course this is not going to happen overnight and there will need to be an infrastructure built around
this. There is a very interesting thread on the other site ROTD talking about Youtube needing to create
direct mp3 links v setting up a music industry run video site.

An even bigger problem is the lack of real hits and the complete dumbing down of the charts by American rubbish.
So for now covers seem to be the only way to hear hits and Glee is lapping it up big time.

JK to sum it up, we need to find great new music first and this is the hardest part now in the instant upload world.

I had a lovely dinner last night with Sons of Admirals - a great group of young men which very nearly cracked it but not quite. We discussed this very topic and the power of the Internet to get attention but not sell music (like Chocolate Rain). They know my own chosen route (making full length feature films like Vile Pervert; The Musical - provoking decent iTunes revenue). Some of us are still trying - we shall succeed eventually.

Very interesting JK how did you go about getting the word out ?
50,000 downloads of the movie should provoke a few thousand download sales.
Any chance you can elaborate on your experience as you may not realise that
you may be sitting on the elusive new model

Coming up for 60,000 (we hope to hit that by our third birthday this May) actually - totally down to word-of-mouth, mentions in online influential weeklies like Popbitch; most of all, though, the quality of the product. They watched it, liked it (often against expectations), stayed for the entire 96 minutes and told others about it.
And some of those downloaded a track or two from iTunes (or even bought the DVD/CD package from Amazon).

As one of my favourite all-time movies said...

"If you build it, they will come".