LET'S GET A GENUINE UNSIGNED BAND INTO THE CHARTS: TWO ARTISTS' STORIES

Internet contest based in the UK and featuring talented musicians from all over the world

Voting Page: http://www.french4tots.co.uk/unsignedbands/index3.html
Facebook Page:   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=404204360003
Vote for Jann Klose site:http://www.french4tots.co.uk/unsignedbands/klose.php

New York City-based pop singer/songwriter Jann Klose's song "Doing Time" is in the semi-finals of an intriguing Facebook "battle of the bands"-styled Internet contest called, "Let's Get a Genuine Unsigned Band into the Charts." The contest allows everybody to listen to songs by independent musicians, rate them by how they like the songs at the link http://www.french4tots.co.uk/unsignedbands/index3.html . On February 21st a winner will be chosen, publicised, and members can buy the artist's MP3 single over the course of a week, making the song hit the charts.

The contest was thought up by Oliver Tooley, a London-based singer who fronts the group Led Zep Too.  He also has a volume of original music, and has always supported independent music. An example is how Klose met him, after his agent mistakenly called Tooley's number to find a gig in London. As Tooley was familiar with the talent buyer's name, he gave the agent advice and UK leads for gigs, and then turned out for Klose's first show in England.

Through the years Tooley's presented small battles of the bands on MySpace, and only "got as many as 12 votes for one band!"

In late 2009 he realized it takes about 5000 people to buy an MP3 to have it place on the UK radio charts, and decided to start up the Facebook group. First, he invited all his friends, on the first day he had 250 members in his group, by day two there were 500 people.  Says Tooley: "It was growing exponentially, at the end of the first week there were over 2500 people. Now we have 8000 members and this is only five weeks old."
 
84 bands were in the first round. The second round of voting features 31 bands.  Most are from the UK. One group, Anielka, is from Finland. Klose (who was born in Germany, raised in Kenya and South Africa) lives in New York City. Power trio-with-a-singer Paint Box and songwriter Bill Monaghan are from Pennsylvania.

The contest has found Internet airplay, including BBC 6 and Hamiltonradio.net, as well as terrestrial radio in the UK. Birmingham, UK recording studio XRP has been featuring contestants' music on its station and self-promoting heavily on the Facebook page to the point that members are listening to that station throughout the day.

Tooley understands that some of the voters work with bands in the running, and will purposely down-rate competing artists. He also understands that some of the contestants, who lose the contest may not stick around to buy the winning recording. "I believe there'll be 10,000 group members by the time we assault the charts. If half our members buy it, the song will get into the top 40." He hopes the musicians will be supportive in order to have this contest run again and--maybe--other people in different countries run their own contest to get onto the indie charts.

While Tooley agrees that all musicians would like to have their music at the top of the charts, he says, "My target number for this Facebook page is to have one of our bands hit “37” on the charts. After that, let the rest of the UK get them to the top. There's a band in the contest called Deferred Sucess, and they have a song that states the sentiment, 'Make a living.'  That is what this contest is about."