While one of the more well known rags to riches stories, how the Arctic Monkeys promoted themselves in the early days shows the influence the internet can have.
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| AM circa 2005 - all of the members were still teenagers |
Starting as many do, the Arctic Monkeys played small venues in their home town, Sheffield. The band gave away CD's to all of the audience members which gained them popularity; not only with their small fanbase but allowed their influence in the local area to spread. This made them stand out from the dozens of similar bands in the area. The Arctic Monkeys became more and more popular through word of mouth, with hundreds of fans singing along with songs that were not officially released yet.
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| MySpace - an early social media site that focused itself on attracting bands to create pages. |
Along with giving away CD's, the band had their own MySpace page. The page had links to all of their songs and gave fans the option to download all of them for free. The band spoke to their fans daily from this page with information such as gigs, song releases and just chatting informally on a personal level. Such vigourous self promotion led to the
Arctic Monkeys making their first TV appearance (on Jools Holland) before they had a record label and before their first album came out in 2005.
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| A screenshot of the early Arctic Monkeys MySpace page |
In the months following their first TV appearance, the band signed up to Domino Records, who had signed Franz Ferdinand shortly beforehand. The hype surrounding the band led to their debut album,
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, becoming the fastest selling debut album in British music history, selling 360,000 copies in its first week.
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