BAND RESEARCH ONLINE

The Maccabees interact and socialise with fans through many different ways online one way is through Twitter. This is a very direct link to the band on here the are able to contact fans who also have twitter account. They can see how many fans they've have gained through the amount of followers they have.

Social media have completely changed the way audiences interact with their preferred bands. This is a new trend i have noticed with many other band and artists included. It is also avoids record labels having a stranglehold who have previously been gatekeepers, controlling access to bands and artists as gatekeepers.

I read in The Times newspaper (19/10/2011) Shaun Parkers claim that the American Indie band Foster the People in the past year has gone from obscurity to the most listened to band on Spotify. He says "this was because fans began sharing their songs over social networks".

Another way is through The Maccabees official website where they have more promotions and advertisements e.g. band touring dates and latest releases. Here they have also used new album artwork and themes to introduce their new album and have also advertised to pre order it on Amazon.co.uk. Most people use new technology to do their shopping and music buying is a really good example of this with a whole variety of different way to buy music, such as Amazon, iTunes and Napster. They also provide links at the bottom to their other pages.

I researched what was trending at San Francisco Web 2.0 2011 conference this week. I noticed that there were innovate ways of buying, listening to and sharing music.

Another social networking site they use is Tumblr which is an alternative blog allowing short posts of mainly pictures. Here they have publicised there own 4 page spread on NME via Tumblr to show that they are back and up and coming.

I read NME regularly online, i have noticed that many different institutions have now produced online versions such as The Times and The Guardian also with other music magazines such as Wired. Apple has also introduced a news stand app allowing you to download magazines in the same way as audiobooks. Both institutions like the music industry and audiences like myself use a huge number of new technologies as a matter of course.