Celtic troubadours hit jackpot in cyberspace

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Auckland Celtic folk trio Lothlorien may not be household names at home, but in cyberspace they're huge.

The band, which has never landed a record deal in this country, is top of the internet charts, clocking up big American bucks on the hugely popular United States-based MP3.com site.

Almost unknown here, Lothlorien's career took off after exposure on the site, one of the most popular on the web, attracting more than 10.7 million visitors a month downloading around 33 million tracks.

The band are now fielding calls from US radio stations asking permission to play their music, and two film-makers have asked to use Lothlorien songs as soundtracks for short films.

But the band - Chris Lloyd, Tamzin Wood and Nicole Leonard - turned to the net only after record labels ignored their sound.

Said Lloyd: "The folk thing here is so small there are hardly any places you can play."

Yesterday, their single Ghostwood topped MP3's Celtic music category.

The site hosts more than 469,000 tracks from around 74,000 artists in a format that allows near CD-quality music to be downloaded from the net.

Ghostwood has been on the site for a few months but started moving up the charts in the last week, heading off about 360 other tracks.

As a result, the trio are now earning $150 ($326) a day, a situation Lloyd describes as bizarre.

Ghostwood and other Lothlorien tracks are being played by nearly 3000 people a day, and the band have so far earned $US1512.

Lothlorien are not the only New Zealanders enjoying success on the site.

Chris Mason-Battley Group, Mistake Theory and Blue Train have collectively earned over $US11,000 since last May.

The groups are cashing in on MP3.com's Payback for Playback scheme, which rewards artists who contribute free music with a monthly share of $US1 million of advertising revenue, depending on popularity.

New Zealand's biggest internet music earner is Chris Mason-Battley, a Waitakere jazz musician and part-time music teacher, who has submitted seven tracks to the MP3.com site last May.

Yesterday, he had accumulated $US8056.94 in earnings from MP3.com.

'It's pretty amazing actually," said Mr Mason-Battley, a part time music teacher at four Auckland high schools.

Despite his success on the wires he has no immediate plans to turn professional.

"I'm committed to my classes, and I'm not going to jump off the edge into something unless it's stable. But some of my students are quite incredulous, they ask me: 'What are you doing here?"'

So far MP3.com's biggest earner worldwide is California-based easy listening artist Ernesto Cortazar who collected $ 24,795.46 in one month last June.

Links


mp3.com