Sonicbids band Fitz and the Tantrums (and one of my personal favorites) just made an announcement that they hit 1 million plays on Youtube for their video, "MoneyGrabber." Exciting stuff! Not too long ago, I got to ask Fitz himself a few questions about being a successful emerging musician. Read what he has to say and check out MoneyGrabber below!
Clearly you've seen great successes with your music. What one piece of advice would you give to a "baby" band who say, just recorded their first song?
Give your song away in exchange for an email address using a platform like TopSpin. Get all your friends to tweet and post about it and let people get to know your music.
You recently played SXSW. That's awesome. Is there something that you think made you stand out to this promoter that got you the gig?
This is our second time at SXSW and we have done so much work touring and building a name for ourselves that I think that helped.
What are some of your goals for your music over the coming few years?
(We want to) keep touring and keep being creative and pushing ourselves as artists. We always want to be writing more music.
- With the NARAS labeling artists like Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney "indie," there's been a lot of talk recently about what being an "indie" artist really means today. What does "indie" mean to you, and do you think there will be a different word we use in the next 10 years?
Well I can't get behind calling Taylor swift of McCartney indie when they have massive amounts of money behind them. Are they doing things independently? Yes. Everyone is realizing that with the Internet they don't need to be as reliant on the same institutions as before. To me "indie" is something born out of necessity. We busted our asses for several years when no one would get behind our music and to me that's what indie is about.
Make a prediction, any prediction. What's one development, change or trend for emerging music over the next ten years?
With the way technology is changing at such a rapid rate I don't think anyone knows what the future will look like for music. All I know is people will always make music and people will always need music in their lives.