The Sandi Thom Story: Fraud Or Smart Marketing?
Thanks to Hypebot reader Alison Noise who tipped us off to what some say is the real story behind 
Sandi Thom’s month of nightly webcasts from her UK apartment that reportedly led to 100,000 listeners and signing to RCA. We’ve been writing about Thom for weeks, but detailed posts on The Velvet Rope and on the blog Chartreuse now chronicle how Thom was already a part of the industry’s marketing machinery having signed to a well connected publisher six months ago and how independent web statistics call into question the 100,000 listenership stats.
Some want to condemn Thom, but since when is hype not just that….hype? If Thom had some forward thinking folks at a well connected company behind the webcast idea and press campaign is that such a horrible thing? The truth is that someone came up with a fairly original and affordable idea (a month of webcasts from a small UK apartment) and made a story of it. I first heard about Thom’s webcasts in an email blast from a completely unrelated indie label staffer who just thought the whole thing was cool. It was cool and Hypebot and hundreds of other media outlets agreed giving Thom a lot of free press. Isn’t this what viral marketing is all about?
No, that’s not what it’s about. This story is about two things. One, the artist has been misrepresented, and even worse may have misrepresented herself. Her music isn’t as popular as we were lead to believe, and she wasn’t just a nobody with an Internet connection when Sony BMG found her. That’s the story that was sold. Two, journalists bought into this story big time and have created the myth of a Cinderella story as if to say, “If she could do it, anybody can do it.” It’s not really a Cinderella story. She had financial backing and a publishing deal in place.
Yes it is a Cinderella story & the press have lapped it up because that’s the kind of story Joe Public likes to hear.
Unfortunately the story isn’t true. Sandi already had a record deal, a publishing deal, manager & a PR company backing her up – nothing wrong with that but it shouldn’t be something you have to hide either.
So to all you budding indie artists – pop goes the fairytale, sorry this is reality.
Unless viral marketing is about creating a hoax – this is nothing to applaud.
For more on Sandi Thom, check http://www.richandmark.com
Its quite obviously bullshit.
i knew it as soon as they said “got signed by webcasting gigs from her basement”
If you have ever tried broadcasting a webcast you will know its not an easy thing to do….to anything over like 10 people never mind 100,000.
You need a server capeable of coping with the bandwidth of streaming video to 100,000 different computers. an unsigned nobody in a basement somewhere in london does not have the means to broadcast something like that….but sony do.
And to top it off her music is fucking god aweful…im not surprised sont/bmg took to these dirty tactics to get people to listen! have you heard the no more heros cover?? uuugh!