In otherwords, in the online world in Australia at least, they're huge. They consistantly get the most downloads of any artist on the site, most of of which are refered from their website.
It really does point out how inefficient these sort of charts are for showing what the best new talent online is. If we were to suddenly get a lot of Regurgitator tracks, or new Whitlams tracks, or even Powderfinger (just talking Australian bands here) they'd kick the charts arse... or would they?
The Whitlams are on the site, but it's a track that most people already have (You Sound Like Louis Burdett ) and it sits down around 90-100th track in Alternative most of the time... but that's without any advertising of the track at all. If the official Whitlams website pointed out that the track was online at MP3.com.au on it's front page, maybe the downloads would be higher?
MP3.com.au is a great place to be discovered (by fans, not record companies) accidently but bands need follow up. A CD for sale. Gigs. Or even a website with more info. More often than not bands put music on the site and wonder why their not famous, and complain that they've had one download and they havn't told anyone about the song on the site. That one download was probably the content manager checking the song out...
Which I suppose is why The Whitlams is on the site. It's not something they would advertise on their main homepage because if you've gone there, you already know about the Whitlams (in theory, in practice you may have only heard the name and guessed the website and want a full song sample anyway). Having the track on the site is for accidental hits. Being a high quality track that will grab the notice of someone oveaseas just browsing.
It's all so random. The charts are impossible because there will always be a way to cheat them. Opinion based stuff (like Reviews, or 1 to 5 etc.) is also very easily cheated. You can't even force people to log in to download because, apart from effectively killing your "just browsing" audience, users will just create hundreds of dodgy accounts and keep on downloading.
Ranting of MP3.com.au... the band I've mentioned a few times, "Clone8", have finally put some tracks online. They were a band I accidently saw one day and was completely blown away. They were absolutely awesome, but had no CD to sell me. Finally they have a CD, but not with the singer I saw them with, which is a real pity because that is what is most lacking in the recordings now up on MP3.com.au. The musicianship is great but the singing needs work. Hopefully they'll get somewhere someday.
The CD thing is interesting. It's the main reason Walken arn't playing gigs (other than Daniel going away and Bruce quiting but hey). It's pointless playing a gig if you have nothing to give people who liked you. You need a CD. We have demos but they're not good enough in our opinion. We could do better. We want to do better.
We're looking at studios but the expense scares me. I still feel it's all a bit premature to be spending this kind of money, when we're not even a full band at the moment. But we either put out a CD, or do gigs. Gigs are impossible because we're not a full band, so CD it is. But are we ready?
Someone at work suggested we simply spend a lot of time recording at home, record vocals in a studio and then get it mixed/mastered professionaly. Mastering is the main block to getting a CD played on the radio. And the mixing process may well improve any glitches that couldn't be fixed at home.
And then there is time... so little time. In the immediate future we're writing, jamming, playing with new material...
*sigh*