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MCFLY - BOTB'S ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR HARDWORK!!!

Over the past 24 hours I must have had 20-30 different bands asking to vote for their band on the Mcfly Battle Of The Bands

In the Northwest region alone there are currently 115 different bands competing for a chance to open up for Mcfly at venues such as the Manchester Apollo and Preston's Guildhall

Imagine if you will a kind of X Factor for pop punk / pop rock bands where the commitment isn't so much as a 50p text, but a simple click and like on facebook - non committal action from people who wouldn't normally go and watch live music or put their hands in their pocket for an I Tunes download (or for oldies a CD)

The problem is - this is all just a distraction, which admittedly helps Mcfly by publicising the tour to thousands of people (the likes on the top 5 bands alone would sell out the Manchester date if converted to sales), from bands actually proactively pursuing their career.

Imagine if the 5 hours the band spent last night publicising another voting competition was actually spend pushing the bands next gig or the bands EP which is currently on I Tunes and sold a handful of copies. A rammed out gig or quantifiable amount of downloads sold means something - coming top 15 in a online BOTBS simply means that a friend knows how to use a mouse and click!!

It's not Mcfly at fault - next month there will be another voting competition to publicise a clothing line or hair gel or a mobile phone company. Next year there will be the godawful Surface Festival and Live & Unsigned.

The same bands will spend hours upon hours hoping they can become the real band equivalent of Steve Brookstein or Leon from the X Factor (who??? Exactly). And all the while this is happening it takes away from the fact maybe they could be selling out real gigs if they put the same effort in or that downloads could go from 10s to 100s to 1000s

In a band and reading this? Fuck off the BOTB lottery and realise - there is no substitute for hard work so publicise your own band rather than another band or brand - how many of the bands in your own musiccollection made it because of one of these tacky comps?

Alex McCann

 



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