There was a time when bags of talent, bucketloads of sweat and a healthy dollop of luck were all that was required to usher a youthful beat combo up into the sunlit uplands of public consciousness. But with fans increasingly turning to the net, music sales falling and cash-strapped record companies less willing than ever to take a punt on new talent, the musicians of today must be canny entrepreneurs as well as demon tune-smiths.

As a host of comedy trumpets heralds the arrival of the silly season, the time is ripe, and media eyes are open, to marketing methods that are ingenious, brazen or just downright odd. Here are seven ways of getting new music out there.

1. GO BACK TO SCHOOL

The London duo Honey Ryder bypassed getting a record deal by selling shares in themselves for £3,500 a pop. For this, each investor gets a 0.5 per cent return on profits from sales, touring and merchandise. The share sales finance the band’s promotion. And their tours? Well, for the past few months they’ve been gigging at school assemblies.

It certainly beats morning hymns. What’s more, the band record a special version of their single at each school, which the kids can buy on the internet website and all the money goes back to the school. “We don’t see any of the cash at all,” says Martyn Shone, one half of the duo, earnestly. Maybe not, but if the business model’s a success, you can bet others will follow.
Where can I hear them? Listen here

2. GO ON DRAGONS’ DEN

One beady-eyed Dragon in the current series handed over £75,000 to the Cambridge-based indie band Hamfatter, in exchange for 30 per cent of all future earnings. Didn’t the band worry about their credibility?

“I think there was potential for it to be edited to make us look like buffoons,” says Hamfatter’s lead singer Eoin O’Mahony, “but in the end the edit was quite realistic.” The band’s manager, Jamie Turner, explains: “In terms of credibility, we had already been offered record deals from Parlophone and 679, which was a teenage dream come true – but it’s not until you actually get an offer and read through the terms that you realise what you have to give away in terms of artistic control and royalties.”

With their Dragons’ Den deal, Hamfatter’s three members will get 17.5 per cent each, compared with an industry average of 20 per cent split between the band. Which sounds like an ace deal – but only if Hamfatter make money. At time of press, their single is at No 151 in the charts.
Where can I hear them? Listen here

3. GET DAVID GEST IN

The novelty single has a long and dishonourable history, but could we be on the cusp of a new era of tat, with once-credible bands enlisting Blist celebs to sing. This month the Glasgow band Attic Lights will release Bring You Down, a sweet, psychedelic pop song, which comes complete with remixes from the likes of Mogwai and Jim Noir. Among these is a mix featuring the former Mr Liza Minnelli, David Gest.

According to the band, it’s all down to a chance meeting on a Glasgow-bound flight, where the band’s producer John McLaughlin and Gest got on so famously that they repaired to McLaughlin’s house for some serious boozing. On hearing the Attic Lights’ single, Gest declared, “I feel a monologue coming on!” McLaughlin whipped out a mike, and bang!
Where can I hear it? Listen here

4. GET FEATURED ON A FICTIONAL ONLINE SHOW

The future of entertainment is Snack TV. So says teen social networking site Bebo, and Universal’s Globe Production team. Snack TV is a miniature drama, 2-5 minutes long, that can be squished guiltily into your lunch break or consumed to ward off homework despair. You might already have caught some Bebo snackettes, via KateModern or Sofia’s Diary (now a TV series).

Little wonder, then, that a music industry desperate to sell product wanted in on the idea. And so The Secret World of Sam King was born. Set and filmed at Universal Records, it follows postroom boy Sam, an aspiring record producer, who gets to meet the cream of Universal’s artist roster. “The idea is you’ll get a proper inside look at the music industry,” says Globe head Iain Funnell. It certainly seems a shrewd move, given the kicking the industry’s getting, to give it a friendly, cute, teen-friendly face. “I think it’s a bit unprecedented, opening our doors,” says Funnell, “but I wouldn’t say it’s deliberately a charm offensive.”

Bebo President Joanna Shields manages to both more open and more opaque. “Bebo has evolved the advertising model with innovative product integration into the storyline of original productions,” she says, in fluent management speak Meaning? Well, besides product placement or sponsorship, these mini dramas are interactive. Sam’s mate has a radio show that broadcasts in real life; viewers can vote on who’s in or out of the cast, even contact its stars.
Where can I see it? Watch here

5. SELL AN HEIRLOOM

Most of us have experienced that “please-please-please” moment of wishing the phone would ring, or willing a cheque through the door. But few people can claim to have had their prayers answered as directly as Nell Bryden, a New York singer songwriter. At the end of a self-funded two-year tour, Bryden was so skint that she moved back in with her folks. One day while tidying the loft, she found a painting that she liked, which just happened to be by the 1950s modernist Milton Avery.

Without further thought, the family flogged the painting for $300,000, and Bryden is now a viable musical prospect. But does it matter if her endeavours are funded by a lucky find, rather than the backing of a major record label?

“The need for capital has always been there in the arts,” says Bryden. “People used to have patrons, and you’re always going to need some sort of funding. But the industry has changed so much that even when the capital is there, it’s like your career is being run by a board of executives. I have a sense of the poetic justice of it,” Bryden concludes. “Here is a piece of art that is paying for other art. It’s a very even exchange.”
Where can I hear it? Listen here

6. BEFRIEND PETER GABRIEL

The Genesis singer/environmentalist Peter Gabriel used to dress up as a flower onstage, so is clearly a man in favour of taking risks in the name of artistic expression. More recently, Gabriel has explored ways of providing free music downloads by embedding advertising in music. Now, in partnership with posh speaker company Bowers & Wilkins, Gabriel has developed a way of making and marketing music that seems to benefit everyone. Can it really be true?

Last year, B&W and Gabriel’s Real World developed an online music club that provides its 200,000 subscribers with exclusive, pristinely produced music, delivered in true hi-fi quality, rather than a compressed MP3. When an artist makes an album at Real World studios, it gets premiered at the club for three months, after which the artist can take it to whatever record company they please. Gwyneth Herbert did this with her Blue Note album Ten Lives.

“The music industry is a dinosaur with no ideas,” says B&W brand director Danny Haikin, gleefully. “What it hasn’t realised is that there was one paradigm previously, and there probably needs to be a hundred in the future.” The government’s recent crackdown on illegal downloading (by getting ISPs to send narky letters to suspected sharers) are, says Haikin, like Prohibition. “People are going to drink, like it or lump it. The question is: do you try to arrange yourself around human instinct, or try and fight it?”
Where can I hear them? Listen here

7. GET YOUR SONG IN A VIDEO GAME

Yes indeed, 16 years since Axl Rose walked down the aisle with Stephanie Seymour in the November Rain video, Guns N’ Roses are keen to prove they're still capable of scrambling teenage minds. When the Rock Band 2 video game is released next month, it will feature an exclusive preview of GN’R’s new single, Shackler’s Revenge.

For a band with such phenomenally bad dress sense, this is an incredibly smart move. For starters, it hits their target audience square in their tenderest teenage parts. But it’s also about the listening experience itself: when you hear a pop song in a movie, it’s a passive experience, a soundtrack to the main attraction. But if you feature a song in a computer game in which your audience takes an active role, the song becomes associated with high-kicking, scissor-jumping thrills.
Where can I hear it? - Rock Band 2, out in September on the Xbox 360

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