This week, the Arctic Monkeys are poised to have the biggest selling debut album in the history of the UK. Their debut album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" sold 100,000 copies on its first day. And this is from a band that had a strew of hit singles and sold out tours, all without proper recordings or a label. They're just the first in what will be a new wave of bands that come from nowhere, the Internet superstars as it were.

Brooklyn indie band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! is another success story from 2005, where they acted as their own label and distributor, selling thousands of their self-made debut and becoming a sensation all without ever touring widely. It's obvious to those 'in the loop' that the 'pitchfork effect' is at play in a lot of these cases. The Arcade Fire saw their debut album Funeral sell in record numbers, spurred on from a spectacular review from Pitchfork.

What's going on here? I think there are a few things at work here:

1. Rapid dissemination of information. Before, the only way for the buzz of a band to spread was via local rags, word of mouth, home-made mix tapes for friends, and grueling tour schedules. Now, a host of music bloggers, review sites, online magazines, chat rooms and P2P networks can spread news, trends, and influence at an almost instantaneous pace.


2. File sharing. Legality/morality aside, the fact that you can download new material from artists before it is released in seconds has a profound impact on the ability for new acts to be discovered and spread their music. You no longer need a 'hip' local record shop to stock the most obscure new band, or have a good local radio station. You can download anything you want at any time.


3. Social Networks/Data Aggregators. Myspace.com has become a revolutionary hot spot for band networking and discovery, allowing people to share their favourite artists with their friends and build networks of fans. At the same time, sites like Last.fm (Audioscrobbler) and their ability to analyze listening patterns and propose new artists introduces an untold number of people to artists that they would have previously never discovered.

Now that these services and sites have entered the mainstream, they are poised to have an even greater impact for the artists who use them. However, it is important to distinguish that unlike the popular mythology that the Internet will usher in some kind of holy union of artists and fans without the need for the seedy middlemen, it's obvious that rather than 'disintermediation', we're seeing a kind of surrogate intermediation.

P2P networks, Myspace, or Audioscrobbler become the mediators and occupy the roles previously held by labels and radio. However, rather than fully replacing them, we're seeing a growing number of indie bands leap from the springboard of these services into the arms of a more welcoming major label. Indie 'darlings' Death Cab For Cutie signed to a major, and more recently The Decemberists also hitched up with Capitol records. Even after their auspicious start distributing all their songs for free to their fans, the Arctic Monkeys now have a label.

It's been said a lot, but the music industry is in the middle of a revolution and it's clear that the mediators are the ones that are slowest to adapt, and as a result they're seeing themselves displaced either by new types of mediation, or by new mediators who are eager to recognize the value provided by this new generation of superstars.

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And for a limited time, a different mix of "From The Ritz To The Rubble" I came across:

Arctic Monkeys - From The Ritz To The Rubble