It had to happen at some stage – the online equivalent of pyramid selling and chain emails has conflated to use bands and their fans to generate a buck. In essence the site has noble intentions – it intends to correlate bands who register on the site with similar bands so they can basically do a complicated ‘Facebook Like’ of each other and then track recommendations. It also allows bands to ‘trade’ fans and info on them – a 2010 version of sharing mailing lists.
What the site fails to recognize is that fans are unlikely to want bands pushing other bands down their throat. Sure, punters like to discover new artists through their favourite bands but they generally like to do it under their own steam. It’s a very contemporary version of giving props to another band in an interview – whether it’ll catch on remains to be seen. Check it out at www.headliner.fm
