PR and the Social Web

Arctic Monkeys were hailed as the musical standard bearers of the web 2.0 generation.  True, their MySpace presence was part of the package that propelled them to rock stardom but they have always denied that it was the defining factor. The real A-lister for the Gen Y music aficionados is Imogen Heap.

She shared every detail of the production of her latest album Ellipse, on Twitter, posting as she toiled on harmonies into the wee small hours .  For the first time fans could access an artist at work in real time.  Heap gained well over a million followers (more than Stephen Fry or Sarah Brown) on the micro blogging network in the process.  Whilst Lily Allen and Courtney Love are twitter qwitters, Heap keeps piling on the tweets.

Her involvement with the crowd extends to her music.  Last year as part of the Twitter Twestival fundraiser, Heap allowed fans to download all the vocals (track by track)  for a song that was originally composed for a TV programme but was never completed.  Using Soundcloud the vocals for the ‘The Song That Never Was’ were made available for fans and followers to complete the recording adding their own instrumentation and interpretation. There were over 500 versions recorded and uploaded.  That has to be some kind of record.