The Truth About Internet Cinderellas

"Northern guitar band the Arctic Monkeys and pop starlets Lily Allen and Sandi Thom have all rocketed to the top of the charts on the back of ‘organic’ publicity ostensibly created by an uprising of youth fervour on the MySpace site."

"Yes, we know by now that when acres of coverage are generated by a new online phenomenon – and when a spruced-up bandwagon chugs its way through the popular consciousness – the chances are that the experience isn’t really ‘organic’ at all, and somebody somewhere’s been trundling the wheel."

"Everyone likes to think they’re the wildebeest in a paddock full of lambs bleating to the same tune. And today, that is the very illusion the marketers try to sell you – that you’re the one who’s on the money, who’s an innovator, who listens to bands and solo artists that no one else has yet heard of. Where pop advertisers might have tried to sell artists in the past on the basis that they were popular and therefore good, today they try to sell us artists as being ‘underground’, ‘organic’, cultish phenomena that you – as a discerning YouTube or MySpace user – managed to uncover all on your own!"