Play this music game and more at JamLegend
For today's Feature Friday, we travel to Germany and meet son et lumière, one of the most played bands on JamLegend with over 2 million plays--that's TWO MILLION, holy cow!!--on their rocker "On the Rocks." In recent months, the band has been laying low in search of a second guitarist (thankfully, they found a great one!), and in the coming weeks they will be writing and recording new songs. But in the meantime, we caught up with bassist/vocalist Pascal to ask what it's like to be one of the most played on JamLegend. Pascal told us son et lumière found JamLegend because of an article in the famous German online magazine spiegel.de back in January 2009: "We tried it immediately and ended up playing the whole night battling for the high score." They contacted Ryan, one of the JamLegend founders, and asked if they could put their music on the site and that's how it all began. At the time, son et lumière were working on their album Stay Classy and picked "On the Rocks," a song they though had potential as a single. With 2 million plays, it's not surprising that the band has been contacted by fans from Peru, China, Singapore, France, New Zealand, Norway, Hawaii, Brazil, Morocco, Russia, India, and many more places. "I mean the whole world is online, but with normal measures such as MySpace or others we could never reach such an audience. Jamlegend.com has become such an important promotion tool for us," says Pascal. He showed us their favorite comment written on their JamLegend band page wall: When I pressed play i really felt good. 'On the Rocks' is one of the best songs I heard. They also love watching YouTube videos of fans playing "On the Rocks" on JamLegend, and they even found one of someone playing the song on a real guitar while his mom made dinner in the background which they found "lovely." While son et lumière have connected with fans from across the globe, maybe the best and funniest fan interaction happened right where they live. Linda the vocalist was on the bus when she overheard some kids talking about JamLegend. Here's Pascal's account of what happened next: "She first listened a bit to their stories and high score debates and then joined in and talked to the boys. Of course they did know 'On the Rocks' and were truly going nuts when she told them that she was actually singing this song. It ended up with a little a capella version in the bus with Linda singing and all the little boys imitating the guitar sound with the mouth." Even though JamLegend and the online world has helped son et lumière find a global audience, the real world has yet to catch up with their explosive success. While the band is set up to sell digital downloads of their songs, they find it difficult to find distribution for their CDs. Pascal laments, "We haven’t got the opportunity to sell our record worldwide physically and are sad to disappoint the request for it coming from South America or East Asia but we are still trying to find a way out of this misery. If anyone can help us out on this one, we would be very pleased." Can we work some JamLegend community magic and help find son et lumière distribution for their CDs?
You can find out more about son et lumière on their MySpace page or, if you speak German, their official site, and play their JamLegend smash hit "On the Rocks" below!