From digg:

Spoof indie band “with no talent whatsoever” invented by Q magazine in order to prove that the Rupert Murdoch-owned site is now just another cog in the older industry phenomenon of hype lands huge gigs!

The source for this story is an amazing piece of reading,

After just four weeks, Hope Against Hope had a devoted fan base. Alan McGee – once a member of Tony Blair’s Creative Industry Taskforce, and the man who discovered Oasis and the Libertines – even offered them a gig at his influential Death Disco club night.

The concept is nothing new, but goes to show how powerful marketing, the internet and social network can be. To make this even easier, several people have coded “my space friend adder” software that will scout out “friends” based on criteria you set, such as location, age, musical preference, etc.MySpace has become the new billboard campaign. On webmaster forums people buy and sell ad space on websites, nothing new there. Over the last year or so, website publishers have been purchasing bulletin posts by MySpace members who have large groups of friends, some reach into the millions.

Tila Tequila, also known as Tila Nguyen, is among those who are topping the lists of most friends with (NSFW) her MySpace profile, with over 1.6 million friends and growing daily. This mostly happened after she appeared on the VH1 show, Surviving Nugent. She did have a fairly good career going in modeling as well, mostly with the import car industry, but her real passion is music and has been using MySpace in an attempt to make her dream a reality. Tila has been able to capture the fan base but has yet to really make the next step into being a big pop act in America.

On the other side of the coin are the established artists, TV shows, magazines, sports teams and just about every other company right now, internet based or traditional, having a profile on MySpace. It makes good marketing sense; in that it gives fans a way to give feedback directly to the artists, teams or personalities that they love as well as keeping up to date on whatever it is that happens to be new for that profile. For the high profile page owner or business that has a profile, it gives the ability to advertise for free to millions of people. The trade-off for all of this are of coarse the annoying ads, horrible themes and wretched music that everyone has on their profiles, and one other not so good topic, bad press. The ability to easily leave negative comments for someone can often times hurt a MySpace profile and erupt into a flaming war faster then pouring gasoline on a fire. Companies and high profile celebrities need to keep a tight reign on everything; otherwise it is liable to make it through the internet bloggers and news sites in less then an hour.

 

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