Self-proclaimed musician the “G-Man,” also known as Scott G. (we don’t know his real last name), recently sent out a press release detailing how his ability to “work the Web” has helped his music career take off.
Six years ago, recalls the G-Man, he was an advertising writer, radio commercial producer and music critic. But he desperately wanted to make sounds, not just write about them, he said, so he picked up a guitar and began learning to play.
In 2001, he started recording his first album, creating music that he says “fuses today’s dance grooves with pop melodies,” all with a little “sly commentary.” Calling his new album “Grin Groove,” the G-Man says he did several things that he claims “represent the beginnings of a quantum shift in the way music is created, marketed and disseminated to listeners around the globe.”
First, he built a simple, “100 per cent animation-free” Web site, http://www.gmanmusic.com. Then he combed other Web sites for the e-mail addresses of media as well as 25,000 DJs, remixers and those involved with raves, clubs, electronica, dance, and drum ’n bass genres.
He then sent out two e-mail messages to all those addresses: one announcing his new genre of music to the media, and the other one offering to establish peer-to-peer file-sharing relationships with DJs and remixers so the G-Man could send tracks for free to anyone wanting to remix his music. The latter, he hints, is perhaps the most significant part of his approach.
Combine mass unsolicited e-mail with peer-to-peer file sharing and the result, it seems, is a hugely effective marketing tool. The G-Man claims remixers have been using his tracks all around the globe.
“I have had five songs remixed in Russia by a sonic master called ‘Random Distribution,’” the G-Man says in the statement, “and one of these tracks went to number one over there. Meanwhile, an Australian DJ known as ‘Zero Point Energy’ has done a remix that is now showing up on Web sites around the world.”
In Europe, a consortium of remixers called The Allianz led by ‘DJ Insane’ also created remixes of every song on Grin Groove, the press release reveals. It adds that one of the DJ Insane tracks reached number five on a European dance chart.
The G-Man is now signed to Delvian Records and all of his albums are on Apple’s iTunes.
Is all of this just a series of fortunate accidents? The G-Man says he highly doubts that.
“I believe that the music world is breaking up and is at the same time transforming into something new, and you have to address … peer-to-peer file sharing in order to exist in this new world.”
