The rise of the unsigned band

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The likes of Jay-Z and Metallica may have turned fans off this year’s rock festivals, but there is something that’s sure to have them flocking back in droves.

You no longer have to scour the internet or local rags to get a sneak preview of the best of the UK’s up-and-coming bands, because they are being plucked from obscurity to play at some of Britain’s biggest music festivals, including Glastonbury and Reading.

This year, the Travelling Band and the Golden Silvers will be foremost among those new bands playing to 10,000 people at Glastonbury before they’ve even released a record or signed a contract.

Last weekend, in the small town of Pilton in Somerset – the home of the Glastonbury Festival - these two bands emerged above nationwide competition for a huge prize - the holy grail of British rock: a slot at Glastonbury, where they will play on the same bill as the likes of The Verve and Kings of Leon.

Emily Eavis, daughter of the evergreen Michael Eavis and heiress to the Glastonbury Festival, said: “We were blown away by the quality of the acts this year. In the end, though, it came down to our two winners, who were impossible to choose between. The Travelling Band totally won the room over with their gorgeous Americana and the Golden Silvers struck everyone with their originality and amazing harmonies. I can't wait to see them both at the Festival.”

Also, for the first time in its history, the Reading Festival is set to announce a dedicated stage for ten new bands at this summer’s event, following the success of the Unsigned Stage at its sister festival in Leeds last year.

The Radio One Introducing Stage at Reading will be run by BBC Introducing, a nationwide talent search for new musicians. The stage looks likely to have a capacity of up to 2000 people – a much bigger audience than many of the bands will have ever played to.

Radio One presenter Huw Stephens, whose show receives more than 500 submissions per week from unsigned hopefuls, said: “It’s hard to get on the line-up at a proper festival, so this is very exciting. We’re making it easier for new acts to get a platform at festivals and on the radio. I think the last thing bands need at the moment is to sign a major record deal. They need to support lots of bands and play lots of gigs first, to find out if people want to listen to them.”

The rise of the unsigned band was ignited in 2005 when the Arctic Monkeys shot to fame thanks to online downloads and exposure on the Myspace website alone. They at first refused to sign to a label, saying: “We've got this far without them - why should we let them in?”

Three years on, the likes of NME and BBC Radio One have cottoned on to the trend and are scouring the internet and backwater venues for unsigned bands to rub shoulders with the great and the good of rock ‘n’ roll on the main stages of the UK’s biggest music festivals.

This time a year ago, London-based pop rockers the Golden Silvers had just formed and was playing to audiences of 75 people. This June, just 11 later, the band will be playing Glastonbury in front of crowds of up to 10,000.

And all this is without the backing of a label.

Fronting the Golden Silvers is skinny-jeaned lead-singer Gwilym Gold, 25, who has taken the band’s meteoric rise very much in his stride. And he says they have done it in a new way: on merit and not on marketing. This is why, he says, record label backing is far from essential.

“I wouldn’t say we need a label, ultimately. I don’t think it’s vital. I don’t think you need to sign to one of these deals that aren’t really fair and where you aren’t getting a fair percentage of your own stuff. I would like to think we could do it on our own.”

The temptation, he admits, is not easily ignored.

“We’ve been trying to keep it all in our hands as much as possible, because the whole record label thing seems a bit dodgy. They can bribe you into it with the money, and a lot of times you can just jump into it because you get lured by the bait. But we want to be as futuristic as possible. You don’t need a record contract as much if you can think of ways to make it work on your own.”

Once upon a time, such bands and artists had to rely on fate to make it big. They prayed for a pin-striped record company executive to stride up after a gig and proclaim with a flourish of his cigar: “Good lord, you’re signed!”

But no longer. The well-documented proliferation of internet music sites and online social networks has made self-promotion increasingly easy, allowing many bands to survive without big record label backing and truly put the ‘indie’ back into independent music.

The result of this is that the major record labels, already aghast at the plummeting sales of CDs, are being cut out of the loop as artists make their way to the big-time without putting a pen to any contract paper.

Money, however, is still the sticking point for any band looking to make it by themselves. It can cost up to £15,000 to record, produce and distribute a high-quality album, and without a major contract, a band has to use DIY independent labels and raise the money themselves.

According to Stuart Clark of Music Week magazine, this is why major record labels are far from obsolete if bands want to really go far.

“As an artist you can achieve more now, without the backing of anyone else - via promotion online predominantly. And sure, if you want to pay for and release your own album yourself, you can do that, but if you don’t have distribution and a marketing budget it’s very hard.”

New Bands Editor of NME, Alex Miller, said: “I do think it’s possible for bands to exist without a label. Punk bands have been doing it for decades and the Futureheads have recently gone top ten by releasing their own music after their major label dropped them last year.”

A new band, however, will not have the established selling-power of a band like the Futureheads.

Ultimately, therefore, most new bands will be looking for a major record contract to boost their careers, but by making a name for themselves on their own they give themselves much greater leverage to get much better deals when it eventually comes to putting pen to paper.