So teenage chatter on MySpace created the Arctic Monkeys? Yes, according to the standard media interpretation. Not so, according to Adam Webb writing in Technology Guardian. For one thing, the Arctic Monkeys phenomenon preceded MySpace.
But he doesn’t discount the importance of the internet. He quotes the band’s manager at Domino saying:
[The Arctic Monkeys] handed out 50 CD-Rs at the early shows to a small group of fans. As the fans started file sharing them, that’s how it spread over the internet. It was word of mouth.
PR Studies 
There was a slightly amusing oped in Media Guardian a few weeks ago in which Julian Henry opined that he suspected the Arctic Monkey’s were in fact a marketing ploy by News Corp to plug just how yoof and cool MySpace was depsite it now being owned by the biggest media institution on the planet!
At last! A legitimate claim that file sharing is not always a bad thing. As a child of the ‘Napster’ generation, I didn’t buy CD’s but downloaded tracks from the net. I really believe that this shaped my taste in music, even if it was slightly against the law.
Maybe the big music corps will take notice of this and come to the conclusion that file sharing teenagers can be great ambassadors for their brands and their music.
Levaquin.
Levaquin.