Eyespy blog

The Just Joans - Last Night From Glasgow Saturday

2006-07-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Its been a great week with David and Chris of the Just Joans playing every night.
This, this is their final song "Five Beer Bottles"

I was going to shoot a video for it all rain drenched Glasgow streets, smeared street lights and drunken taxi punters. Ach, Blair can do it when the Just Joans get signed to a major. Someone's bound to watch the video eventually.

2006-07-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

The thrilling third webcast from The Just Joans
Today its "I hear you're a man now, John" ruminating on how friends drift apart. Time passes I guess.

Feel free to pass judgement on it over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqb2OzAay7M and if you're all signed up to YouTube already, you could do worse than subscribe to the Last Night From Glasgow webcast channel thing

And if you're really getting into it, check out the secret blog of manc_ill_kid the charming host and creator of the concept, and his ruminations on The Long Tail
Iconoclast? I think so?

2006-07-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Just Joans second

For comments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVZIMMxjms0

The legion of websites

2006-07-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

Here's today's video

and the obligatory link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9m73FQ3Z0w

and in addition, here's a jolly list of all the sites I pimp the webcasts
1. My MySpace blog
2. My MySpace bulletin
3. Jockrock messageboard
4. Teenage Fanclub messageboard
5. NME messageboard
6. Alternative Nation messageboard
7. Radiohead messageboard
8. AFI messageboard
9. Song Facts messageboard
10. The Kooks messageboard
11. Arctic Monkeys messageboard
12. Pearl Jam messageboard
13. Pearl Jam messageboard
14. Thom Yorke messageboard
15. Sandi Thom messageboard
16. manc_ill_kid blog
17. Glasgow Indie Eyespy blog
18. Ivan Lendil Music blog
19. Tipsheet messageboard
20. Velvet Rope messageboard
21. Razorlight messageboard
22. Franz Ferdinand messageboard
23. Snow Patrol messageboard
24. Muse messageboard
25. Keane messageboard
26. Biffy Clyro messageboard
27. Camera Obscura messageboard
28. New Order messageboard
29. Sound Opinions messageboard
30. SoundsXP messageboard
31. Blur messageboard
32. rct-music messageboard

And sometimes it gets pimped on the following sites, but not by me
33. Bowlie
34. Cook'd n book'd
35. Pop Babble
36. Prague Candy

and that, that is how we are currently getting 200 views a day. Not by word of mouth, not by sending out electronic flyers, or with any kind of talent. Just spending hours online spamming and pimping.

2006-07-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

A bit of a special one from Images of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps tonight. This one's a corker, I couldn't quite believe it when Robbie pulled out a pair of Casio VL-1 keyboards and thrust one at me.

New Dawn Fade, originally by Joy Division I guess, but done in the now legendary electro-twee style

Feel free to leave comments and stuff over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPU2tdHf1o0 and if you're MySpace inclines try http://www.myspace.com/iomops to make friends with Robbie and urge him to record the album you've been waiting for.

2006-06-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

Fourth Owsleys Webcast

Comments, etc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z3U_RXxaQw

2006-06-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

The Owsley Sunshine and their campfire classic 'till the mornin' brings my train

comments and abuse to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdA-HnXv1B0

The Owsley Sunshine - Last Night From Glasgow

2006-06-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Owsley Sunshine - Better in Binaural

leave comments and abuse over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW5fDu3NSSM

Subscribe to the Last Night From Glasgow webcasts on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=LastNightFromGlasgow

Buy their album at their online shop

2006-06-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

More Last Night From Glasgow

abuse and comments to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNm1KfB5ME

2006-06-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Find attached below the latest viewing figures graph for Last Night From Glasgow

The light blue/purple columns are the number of viewer in total for each day and the pink line of the cumulative hits.

We can see that since the Plimptons webcasts took over four days ago, we've had lots more hits, the pink line goes up more, the blue columns are taller. The first track of each artists rungets their highest audience figures, for manc_ill_kid it was Bacon Sandwich and Vodka, and for the Plimptons it was Someday, and for each artist the second night gets about 60% as many hits.

I reckon its a co-incidence that all the other tracks seem to be heading for the 100 mark, apart from my 6th day effort which by my own admission was pants.

It could just be that for the Plimps we've put so much more effort into spamming messageboards, twenty on last count.

I wonder if its getting us a loyal following anywhere?

Adam Plimp reckons today's track, Ice Ape will sell itself, I'm not so sure, but we've nowt much to lose, so I'm no gonna pimp it so much and see how it goes

2006-06-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

Martin in a wig singing self-disgusting songs about his days at the Cathouse.

Actually one of the best songs from the two-piece Plimptons set

Abuse and comments to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_eID2YgAIg

2006-06-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

After watching a collection of American Pie videos, the Plimptons were inspired to write a new song, and in a way a tribute to Blink 182.

Monday's Last Night From Glasgow webcast

comments and click on the damned rating button over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wj3fifjDxA

2006-06-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

Teeny tiny tears of sadness that Glasgow Indie Eyespy is now abandoned. But never fear, there's still music out there.

Here's these are the songs what Camera Obscura played the other night at the QMU
just do yourself a right click save as

Come Back Margaret.mp3
Hey Lloyd.mp3
I love My Jean.mp3
Teenager.mp3
The False Contender.mp3
Dory Previn.mp3
Tears for Affairs.mp3
If looks could kill.mp3
80's Fan.mp3
Lets get out of the Country.mp3
Country Mile.mp3
Modern Girl.mp3
Razzle Dazzle Rose.mp3
I need all the friends I can get.mp3
Suspended fae Class.mp3

2006-06-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Plimptons' webcast for Last Night From Glasgow. This is their legendary song, Someday.

Comments, subscribe etc at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeLlyXuGlg8

2006-06-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

Two songs tonight

As always leave comments over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEh0yPS1408

2006-06-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

Here's today's manc_ill_kid Last Night From Glasgow webcast

and cos I know how much you guys love my graphology, here's a graph

The purple columns show the number of hits the entire collection of webcasts get each day. Notice that it's broadly consistent around the 100 mark. Which means the cumulative hits line, in pink is straight. The first video posted, "Bacon Sandwich and Vodka" in yellow, is the most popular, probably cos its been online for longest, or maybe cos its teh best. "Naked", in brown, also seems to be pretty popular, out reaching "Coffee", in dark indigo, on its first day, or it could be that people clicked on it multiple times to boost the stats.

Now, the cumulative "Total" line in pink, is straight, suggesting that I'm getting consistent traffic from all the places I'm pimping the webcasts every day, there's no word of mouth going on introducing it to a new audience, or the new audience is matching the folk who don't regularly check it every day.

2006-06-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Day four of my career in webcasting. This song's a wee bit sly, its called "Naked"

as always feel free to leave comments over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Siq9nhx_UOY

2006-06-13T15:05:00.000-07:00

Gosh, my first review for the Last Night From Glasgow webcasts and its a corker. The Glasgow Reviewer, a new review site over on myspace caught up with the webcasts from the MySpace bulletins. Looks pretty good

Here's today's show

The song is Coffee, its about the everygirl you see at your cafe but never talk to. The audio's a bit better that the last one, but the video jitters a bit towards the end.

Feel free to leave any cmments over on the YouTube page

2006-06-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

wow, the response from the first one was amazing over seventy people, truly I'm up there with the greats, the Arctic Monkey's, the mighty Thom etc.

This is tonight's show

The song is "September", its about falling for a girl on a canoeing holiday in the lake district, but being too shy to do anything about it.

The audio's all off kilter with the song, not sure why, but I'll try to fix it by tomorrow's show.

Stay tuned, and keep leaving comment on the YouTube site

manc_ill_kid - Last Night From Glasgow

2006-06-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Last Night From Glasgow is a series of daily gigs recorded live in Glasgow and webcast every night.

The first show stars Ivan Lendil Music's boss, under the alias manc_ill_kid

This guy's amazing, he's been compared to Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello.
Truly groundbreaking tunes. He's currently looking for a deal with a major record label

Feel free to go over to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e38PFEPGnI and leave a comment

I'll be posting up a new show every night for the next seven days

Camera Obscura - BBC2 Dermot O'Leary

2006-06-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

I understand the band are rather against illegal downloads, but here's a quick pair of MP3s from Camera Obscura's Appearance on Dermot O'Leary's show on Radio two

natty Hey Lloyd acoustic + drum machine version.mp3
epic cover of Abba's Super Trooper.mp3
Could I be loved (Plimptons cover).mp3

In other news, two degree's of seperation away (Gav (Camera Obscura bass player/Hector Collectors drummer) - Chris Elkin (Hectors guitarist/Just Joans guitarist)) The Just Joans album is now on sale over at Ivan Lendil Music's record label blog

2006-06-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

The Aphrodisiacs and Fuck Off Machete up to the Premier League
The Cosmic Rough Riders and Future Pilot AKA down to the 1st Division

Union of Knives, Tall Boy and Project A-Ko up to the 1st Division
Uncle John and Whitelock and Viva Stereo down to the 2nd Division

Futuro, Rost, The Wheels, The Ronelles and We Rock Like Girl's Don't all up to the 2nd Division
Quixote, The Hussys, Julia Thirteen, Unkle Bob and The Marcia Blaine School for Girls all down to the 3rd Division

Ives, Attic Lights, The Pendulums, Engine, Endor and The Down and Outs all up to the 3rd Division
The Gems, Blind Pew, Figure 5, Squander Pilots and We Are The Physics all down to the 4th Division

The Martial Arts, Titus Gein, The Towers, DresdeN and The Dykeenies all claw their way out of the 13th Note Conference
Masque, The Fortunate Sons, The Hedrons and Crash My Model Car all sunk into the depths of the 13th note Conference

Now here's a thing, The Hedrons have fookin' hunneds of MySpace page views, around 60,000, but by the rest of the Eyepsy scoring methods they're pants, so they're back down in the Conference
Similarly Crash My Model Car, who used to be Poor Old Ben have been relegated, even though they played SXSW, don't care if they're hottly tipped to be the next big thing, right now, they're not the big thing.

Thanks to Dave, whoever he is, for posting a huge list of Scottish bands on MySpace, and ranking them by MySpace pageviews and Myspace chums. Its certainly interesting to see how it diverges from Glasgow Indie Eyespy.

...

I've been givinga bit of thought to branching out and doing a Glasgow Indie Eyespy club night, get a few of the bands to play, giving out MP3 CDs of ass much stuff as I can scrape together, play some CDs. Could be fun, to promote the brand, I'd want to sell tickets online from the site for a bit of halo effect.
But well, it takes a hella sorting out and coordinating. And I have a load of otehr club night ideas I need to do..

The Cinnamon Club - we only play songs by bands that don't exist, entry is 65p

Sound of Scotland - club night in London, where we play much by scottish contempory bands and get some of our favourites to play live. Make it a regular night to draw a regular crowd so when Glasgow bands have trekked all the way to London they at least have a crowd to play for.

2006-05-31T12:24:00.000-07:00

Following on from this thread in Jockrock and the ongoing controversy of Sandi Thom as discussed in the Independent today , here are some graphs of 13th Note Conference bands on Glasgow Indie Eyespy

this first one is sorted by number of last.fm listeners, my usual ranking thing for Glasgow Indie Eyespy, the two lines repesenting Myspace page views and last.fm listeners,

The second one is the same information sorted by number of MySpace page views, the yellow line being those bands with no MySpace page.

This last graph is a scatter one with Myspace pageviews along the horizontal and Last.Fm listeners along the vertical. It looks just like a random cloud because there's no correlation between myspace page views and people listening to bands's MP3s.

I can't be arsed harvesting the data right now, but I reckon, even for more successful bands there'd be little of no correlation between the success of these bands by MySpace and Last.Fm listeners.

I think the fact there are only three blog entries on her MySpace site shows her distain for the medium

Myspace data

2006-05-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

In response to Empafy moaning on the guestbook about how they have such huge success on MySpace but this isn't reflected by their position in Glasgow Indie Eyespy, I devoted much of my weekend to chasing up the MySpace page views for as many of the 13th Note Conference bands as had pages.

Absolutly no correlation with their previous ranking, never the less, you plot the population on a graph, make the y-axis a logarithmic scale and get your power curve thus...

Nice straight line I guess, but I'm still sceptical about the use of MySpace to guage a band's success, rather than gauging how much time they've spent clicking the 'add to friends' button.

Maybe a calculation of song plays divided by page views, hmmm

The Just Joans - Tchai Ovna - 04-May-2006

2006-05-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

A sadly low fidelity recording of the Just Joans.

Back to Highschool.mp3

but two videos!!

This one's called Get Lost

This one is called Five Beer Bottles

Hector Collectors - Tchai Ovna - 04-May-2006

2006-05-08T02:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a load of Hector Collectors song ripped fae the gig the other night at the Tchai Ovna. Sorry about the ones I don't know.

Rightclick, save as, you know the drill

Tony McCarroll.mp3
The Day the Supernaturals went to the 13th Note.mp3
Talkin to another psychopath.mp3
Robson and Jerome.mp3
dunno.mp3
dunno2.mp3
Dominic Diamond.mp3
Alias the Jester.mp3
Whats the Point in getting up.mp3
Pop Medley.mp3
Leafy Lane.mp3

Photies of me and the wife over on Bowlie, but alas, the admins won't let non-members see any piccies.

Lynsey's piccies

Presents: The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles

2006-05-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

Here are some mp3s of The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles's debut show at McPhabbs on Sauchiehall Street Glasgow on Saturday 29th April, supporting The Owsley Sunshine

(just do a rightclick, save as...)
99th Floor.mp3
A Deal is a Deal
Freak Off
Get Ready
I was Led to Believe
I'll make you sorry.mp3
I'm out of control.mp3
Questo Forle Sentimento.mp3

They're my new band, well, I play guitar for them. Me, Luigi, Alan and Dave, in masks!

2006-05-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

new plimptons video aye

Trying to spread rumours a la Sandi Thom, that literally thousands of people are viewing it.

Do your bit, go to the page here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10bN0b_8E0U, watch it and leave a comment, then post the link on your blog. Lets blow this mother

More bootlegs

2006-05-01T13:26:00.001-07:00

From the Plimptons gig at Stereo on Friday 28th April

(Just rightclick, save as)
Rule Britannia.mp3
Realm o' Majick.mp3
Mother-in-Law.mp3
John Major.mp3
Jenny is a full time flirt.mp3
Impulse Records (1970 - 2000).mp3
Chix n Comix.mp3
Britpop.mp3
Belly Button of the World

Highscores

2006-04-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Following on from this post over in jockrock, here's a run down of the highscores culled from the Eyespy guestbook.

1. Poo - 48 points - 03-Dec-2005 (Camera Obscura album-wrap party)
2. illman - 21.5 points - 06-Oct-2005 (Sons & Daughters gig QMU)
3. Brian - 17 points - 28-May-2005 (Raising Kain gig)
4. John D - 12ish points - 22-Nov-2005
5. illman - 11.5 points - 06-Nov-2005
6. Mike - 11 points - 23-Nov-2005
7. Janice - 11 points - 30-Jan-2006
8. Alan - 9 points - 25-Nov-2005
9. Bob - 8 points - 25-Nov-2005
10. John Badiel - 7ish points - 22-Nov-2005

I guess I ought to update the listings for this week. Last.fm is broken right now so there won't be many movers or shakers.

I can't wait to see how Camera Obscura's new album's going to affect their position...

2006-04-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

So...
Cripplingly disappointed that The Plimptons didn't get selected for T-break, but to make up for it I've done the T-Break Eyespy Special page. All 48 of the T-Break bands ranked using the same formula as regular Eyespy.

Interesting from my perspective as it proves and tests my methods. Just to refresh, I use three different 'vectors' to calculate the ranking

Last.fm fans
Google matches
Jockrock matches

In the Last.fm list, I think there are two spurious scores, Futuro share their name with a Japanese dance act and similarly with Korova, both these bands have four times as many fans as the next most popular.

At the bottom end of the spectrum, there are about a dozen bands with no fans on last.fm. If T-Break is any good, then this should change in the next few days and weeks.

For the Google matches, there are a load of bands with non-unique names, like Edinburgh band 'Found' with nineteen billion matches on Google, and again 'Futuro' with 9 million. At the other end of the spectrum 'Some Young Pedro' have 131 google matches.

A lot of the bands have no coverage on Jockrock, in fact only 13 of the 48 have any mentions. Again, if Stu McHugh think's that T-Break is representative of owt this will change.

My own top tips for T-Break winners are

How to Swim
Futuro
Tinrokit
Ives
Found
The Acute
Attic Lights

And just think folks, it could have been the Plimptons all the way

2006-04-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

Yet another of my regular graphical views of the success spread in Glasgow

Secret Bootlegs of recent gigs

2006-03-30T03:42:00.000-08:00

The Plimptons from 16th March 2006 show at the 13th Note

(right click save as)
Realm o' Majik
Rule Britannia
John Major
Peter Quistgaard
Impulse Record (1970 - 2000)
Show a Little Apathy
In My Victorian Secret Garden
Mother-in-Law
Jenny is a full-time Flirt
Help the State
Belly Button of the World
Tonight I'm gonna join the nazi army
Nobody likes a Comedy Rock Band

Metal Petal from 6th February 2006 show Nice n Sleazy

(right click save as)
Metal Petal

2006-03-21T02:04:00.000-08:00

I'd forgotten what it's like, to come into work in the morning, check the stats for web hits and find more hits overnight than in the past three weeks.

A couple of additions to the format:-

Picture of a cute animal at the top of the rules section. Every time I update the rankings, I'll put a different cute animal there, just so its easier to check regularly.
Where possible the top band in each Division gets a streaming video ported over from youtube.com. If there don't have any streaming videos available, I just slyly put a like to a Plimptons video in and a like to the band's own homepage.
The lowest band in the 13th Note Conference gets a link to an MP3 so more people can hear them. This week its Metal Petal, which is lucky cos I recorded them myself.
Promotions and Relegations from each Division only happen once a month. Depending on how google is feeling bands can shoot up and down the stats from week to week, by holding them back a little, it should bring in some sanity.

I'll try to get around to updating Edinburgh Indie Eyespy this week, but to be honest my heart isn't as in it as it is with Glasgow. What I really need is a chap with internet super powers who can do me a script or a utility which will scrape all the stats Ineed off of web pages, so I don't have to look up each band in three different pages manually. If I can get a generic tool that does it, then there should be no bother to set up other regional Eyespys and set the world on fire.

Ah, after the next round of promotions and relegations from each Division, it should see the artist known as manc_ill_kid slip out of the fourth division and to the top of the 13th Note Conference, I'm going to have to shoot myself.

Oh the joys.

2006-01-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

Time for a new button in the corner I guess, this one should be to pimp the new Plimptons video

2005-12-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

Log listeners 23-Dec-2005

2005-12-16T05:09:00.000-08:00

Oh my list of woes.

The biggest psychological issue with Glasgow Indie Eyespy, is the emotional conflict between running a site that charts the careers of so many bands, and actually managing one of the bands in question. So ooh ma heid hurts and my eyes water when I flick through The List and see all these bands who names I know so well, playing so many gigs, and not seeing my own band in there. Bands who are actually working hard and performing with such gusto, whilst my mob will continue to sink down the rankings. "Its not my fault!" I cry, but who am I fooling. We could be the Flying Matchstick Men, playing ten shows a day for the entire month of December, if only I would get them the gigs.

In other news, I've added another twenty or so bands to the database, so come Monday the leagues will all be updated, but like the geek I am, I've been graphing the listener figures and with the higher resolution, it looks like I was wrong with my earlier diagnosis. The listenership of the various bands follows two completely straight lines rather than one smoothish curve.
The steep curve are mostly the premier league bands who's success is world-wide, the mightly Franz, the Belles, Moggers, and the longer established acts who've been around for years. The flatter line is the great multitude of local bands slavishly playing in Glasgow, and pimping their wears to the media.

Its not just a matter of being signed to a major indie, but more about the amount of effort and PR put into it. For this is a graph of how many people listen to the music, not how many gigs the bands play in Glasgow, or how well loved the band are.

So why are the two distinct lines with such a distinct cross over point?

I dunno.

And how can we use this as a measure of the 'Glasgow scene's' success?

I guess as a ratio of angles from the x-axis. The smaller the ratio, the greater the success of the scene. As when there are more bands on the steeper line, it would become less steep.

Alas, there's nothing to compare it to. Edinburgh Indie Eyespy and Manchester Indie Eyespy are still many months away from bearing fruit.

2005-12-05T17:22:00.000-08:00

Another week passes, and this time its all different. Well, it is for me, maybe not for you.

I'm in the middle of moving flats, and the new place has no internet connection, I could lie and claim that I'm managing to update all the pages purely by tapping out binary on the phone connection, but no, its far harder than that. I'm slumped in EasyEverything/EasyInternetCafe, on St. Vincent St. clattering away on the keyboard. Oh how I miss having the net at home.

Instead I'm giving into my more creative urges and doing the new Plimptons video, its about a fortnight away from being finished, but its going to be a corkers. Anyway, enough about me. I expect you'll be wanting to know how all the bands are getting on.

Well, Josephine have disbanded, alas, after what, eight years? So they're now in the formerly of this parish section of the first division, and all the otehr bands have shuffled up.

There's a few more bands in the 13th Note Conference and G-Plan have gone straight into the 3rd Division after moaning I'd forgotten them.

For Movers and Shakers:-
Lapsus Linguae have gone up two places in the Premier League
The Owsley Sunshine, have somehow entered the 1st Division, about time too, could be all the excitement about the new album
Uncle John and Whitelock, have jumped god knows how many places to be above the Plimptons in the 2nd Division, mainly due to having loads more listeners on Last. Fm than they did last week.
The Hedrons, still down in the 13th Note Conference, but have shot up to third from the top. Here at Indie Eyespy Towers we don't know what to make of them, its Tippi and we love her, but just who is it making all the crowd noise in that download track they've got on MySpace?

In the original 2003 version of Indie Eyespy, there was a section about people you see in crowds, and a section with barstaff. But I took these pages out when we went online. I was having a moral diliema. Whilst the bands, the people in the bands have made a conscious decision "I AM IN A BAND, I WANT TO BE FAMOUS!", they're fair game, but barstaff and people at gigs, they haven't.

But then again, they're more recognisable than the bands half the time, and thats what its all about. Maybe this time next week I put the Barstaff and People in Crowds pages online.

Aw man, the guy next to me in EasyEverything has started swearing to himself.

I'm a stalker... Get me out of here

2005-11-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

Well, just finished updating the band rankings. Here's a summary:-

New arrivals - bands that have only just been pointed oot to me (rank in brackets)

(27) International Airport
(39) The Starlets
(75) Dresden
(78) Coriolis
(83) Music and Movement
(89) Cobra Grande
(93) The Blimp
(102) Foxface
(106) The 1990s
(119) The Hussys
(123) The Ads
(127) Stars Kill
(129) Tiny Little Hearts
(138) Temple Lock

Some movers and shakers,

(9) Aereogramme - up from 22 last week
(11) Future Pilot AKA - up from 19 last week
(23) Fuck Off Machete - up from 33 last week
(44) The Owsley Sunshine - up from 47 last week
(53) The Red Bee Society - up from 58 last week
(73) Titus Gein - up from 77 last week
(101) NOM - up from 109 last week

I guess there would have been more if it wasn't for all the new entries. My guess is Aereogramme went up cos google was feeling kind to them this week. Future Pilot AKA and Fuck Off Machete, probably befitting from TV and radio coverage respectively.

2005-11-28T21:29:00.000-08:00

Wooh!!

Someone pimped Glasgow Indie Eyespy on Suicidegirls, thems goth chicks are going to love me... possibly. I'm not a member so I can't read what they're saying. Hmm, they're bound to love this kind of thing, making stalking a sport.

2005-11-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

Hmph, after getting like hundreds, nay, thousands of hits to Glasgow Indie Eyespy, and next to no increase of traffic to the Plimptons website, its time to take drastic action.

I'm going to put a special button in. No expense spared here.

Just trying it out here first before I copy the code across.

What do you think.

Neat eh?

Wow, look at all those hits

2005-11-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

So after I updated the site yesterday, and flagged it over on Jockrock (badly I might add, taking two posts to get the message across, damned net connection), I've had like hundreds of hits.

The second best traffic for a day in the whole existance of Glasgow Indie Eyespy.
The second best day for visits from new people
The bestest day of traffic for returning visitors, my guess its the folk from Jockrock checking up on their own bands, and interested parties who were here a fortnight ago.
And on average each person views three pages.

Still haven't quite worked out how to make money out of this.

The throughput traffic to the Plimptons site and this blog is pretty low, less than 1%. Ah well. It could be that the information I gather to calculate the rankings is valueable to someone, and not just the bands.

2005-11-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

Oh, how much of a chump do I feel like!!

I'd made a mistake in the main algorith for calculating the rankings, so that listeners on Last.fm was having an overbearing influence on the rank, four times more than I'd figured.

So now I've rejigged it, recalculated all the positions and added about ten more bands, and well...

Its a bit scary.

It makes sense

And all those disgruntled fans of Uncle John and Whitelock can breath a sigh of relief, they're up in the Second Division. Hurrah!

More graphs

2005-11-20T04:34:00.000-08:00

Following on from the article below, and discourse with some chaps off of the internet, if I remove Aberfeldy for being an Edinburgh band, and insert the Supernaturals, we eliminate the second step.

We're still left with the unexplained step between Hobotalk and the Cosmic Rough Riders (I thought it was centred on El Presidente, I was wrong).

There's another neat graph we can do, by using a logarithmic scale on both the x and y axises. I've elminated both scales from the graph cos they're increasingly meaningless.
log scale on both axises

Its quite a straight line, or it bulges outwards a bit. I'm not quite sure what this bulge means, but my theory is that if the number of listeners to Glasgow bands was a statistically perfect power distribution it would be a straight line, but the bulge represents how cool or above average the success of Glasgow bands is.

That step is still there, the bottom of the Premiership. On this graph its even more glaringly obvious. I reckon its the getting signed to a major label marker. Broadly, all the bands above it are or were signed to majors and have heavy promotion, and the bands below that step are on indie labels, self-distributed or unsigned.

This doesn't quite explian why the Ronelles, Clearfall and Raising Kain are so low down. Maybe time will tell.

unique names

2005-11-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

One of the weighting vectors I use for ranking bands is the number of google matches, but some bands have this weight cancelled because most of the google matches don't refer to the actual band, for example "errors".

Hats off to the "Multiplies" for managing to commandeer the word "multiplies" and make it their own, their website is the top link on google. This is tribute to the success of the band, but sorry, the other two million uses of the word multiplies don't refer to the band, so that weighting isn't used for them here.

It has been pointed out that even band names that seem unique, such as Images of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps, don't get it either. There are genuinely websites out there about notable mathematicians who have their photos on postage stamps. Maybe if Robbie got his finger out and got a website that would change, but until then, he's just going to have to keep emailing MP3s to cute Canadian DJs and promoters.

Power curves

2005-11-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

So I read this article about power distributiony stuff on the blogsphere, how some blogs are really successful and some less so and so hardly at all. I thought I'd try using the the listener figures for the bands here to plot some similar stuff.

Power Distribution

Its hard to make out, but the truth is most bands have hardly any listeners and Franz Ferdinand have about twice as many as Arab Strap.

It explains a bit about why the premier division hardly ever changes, 50,000 people aren't suddently going to start listening to Belle & Sebastian in one week.

However, down in the First and Second divisions where there could only be 5 listeners seperating some bands, it could change in a week, easily. And in the lower reaches, what will be known as the 13th Note Conference, of bands who have none or one or two listeners, getting your mate to listen to a track, can rocket bands to the top.

Ahh, the wonders of Excel... If we make the y-axis, the up and down one, into a logarithmic scale, we get a graph that is rather easier to make out.

Logarithimic graph

This shows how little there is between the medium bands, only a handful of listeners and the graph gets steeper and steeper as you look left.

What I'm concerned about is this, I think there are bands missing. There's a step near El Presidente and the Yummy Fur. It should all be a smooth curve, but that step suggests there's someone missing. Some band about on the same level as El Presidente.

I haven't a scooby doo who.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice another step by the Trashcan Sinatras and Alasdair Roberts. This is neatly explained by the absence of The Supernaturals from Glasgow Indie Eyespy.

2005-11-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

On several of the messageboard where this place has been mentioned there are disagreements about the league structure and how some bands are far lower than they should.

I agonise over it. I really do,

Its not perfect, but it completely eliminates personal preference, thats up to the individual. The positioning here is a sheer popularity contest, and thats all that holds sway here. The more popular a band, the better they do.

It is possible to buck the system, and it is possible to miss it. And here's how.

First I use google matches as point of the bands score, this only works where the band is the main user of their own name. If you search for "The Plimptons" on google, most of the matches are people talking about the band. However, if you search for "Errors" most of the matches are not about the band. If we used googlefight.com to then Errors would win everytime.

So for some bands, with non-unique name, we don't count the google matches. It doesn't affect their ranking's that much, but it does set "Errors" and "Multiplies" below The Plimptons.

The number of people who listen to the band, is also a subject of contention. Uncle John and Whitelock are a great live band, but according to last.fm, not many people listen to them, I guess they don't promote themsleves online so much, and thats why they're so low.

The Plimptons, on the other hand, duped a lot of Franz Ferdinand fans into downloading one of their songs earlier this year, giving them as many listeners as Dead Fly Buchowski (who are signed to a major indie), and far more than Uncle John and Whitelock & Errors (who have sessions on Radio1) and Multiplies (who are great).

We can't go to every gig by every band, and count the number of people there.
We can't use the number of hits to each band's myspace page, some don't have them and some can fudge it.
We can't use record sales, cos no one knows how many tracks are sold.

However, any suggestions of how to improve the ranking and make it more representative, please, let me know.

2005-11-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

The other week I did a wee experiment to find out how accurate or realistic it is using last.fm to reckon number of listeners.

What I did was recorded a song, and put it up at musicbuilder, which is a neat place for free hosting of MP3s. Then pimped the song round a few messageboards online and all my chums, to get them to download it.

Musicbuilder counts the number of times the tracks have been downloaded.

Over on my last.fm page, I then looked out to see how many listeners it reckoned I had.

58 downloads to 5 listeners. Thats a factor of about twelve... which is terrifying.

That means there's about a thousand Plimptons fans out there. Folk who've actually downloaded their tunes and listened to them.

World Domination

2005-11-12T15:21:00.000-08:00

Its not just about the Plimptons now, its bigger than that.

Since the alternative nation thing and the ball rolling, we're getting hundreds of a hits a day from hundreds of different people. Thats hundreds of people, who last week didn't have a clue who most of the lower division bands are, never even heard of them.

But now, they know the name, The don't know what The Owsley Sunshine sound like, or TheOneWhoFlew, but they now know the name.

We're getting hits from Franz Ferdinand fans, Arab Strap fans, El Presidente fans, who woke up in the morning without Lucky Luke in their consciousnesses, and are going bed in the evening with their knowledge of the Glasgow Indie music scene just a little bit bigger.

I'm thinking whoever it was in the BBC who logged on yesterday may have heard of Lucky Luke, but not the other bands who by the reckoning here are just as good.

Its a Scottish force of Good now, a tool in the promotion of Scottish contemporary music.

Its not about bands fighting tooth and nail, sending off hunneds of CDs and emails to record companies and media, begging people to listen to their music or give them the time of day. Cos now they're already heard of the band, the name rings a bell.

And this is the service Glasgow Indie Eyespy has evolved into.

Manifesto

2005-11-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

Hello,

This is my wee blog about Glasgow Indie Eyespy, where if I feel the urge to write anything about the other website, I can do it here, safe in the knowledge that its just kind of interesting.

I guess a wee bit of explanation is needed.

I'm a wannabe Glasgow scenester, I like going to gigs just to see who's there, the same familiar faces in the crowd. By virtue of having decent eyesight and a good memory for face, I can spot people in the street, "Hey wasn't that Dave who was at the gig last night", "Aw man, we just walked past psycho Bob from Idlewild".

There was a internet meetup thing at the 2004 Belle and Sebastian Botanic Gardens thing, and a load of chums from www.bowlie.com were coming up to visit from all over the uk so I made up a little booklet, Glasgow Indie Eyespy, so they could score points for spotting all their favourite Glasgow band people.

A few months later Mop Girl Lynsey suggested I did an Eyespy website, and after a few attempts I did, just a list of bands and point, it was in alphabetical order.

Soon is became a bit ungainly, so inspired by football, I broke the list of bands down into divisions, so Franz Ferdinand wouldn't be on the same level as Sputniks Down. The main purpose was to pimp my friend's band, The Plimptons to make them seem bigger, better and more successful than they are. Whilst Obviously not in the same league as the mighty Belle and Sebastian, I had them in the league below.

A bit of pimping on Jockrock in March 2005 and Glasgow Indie Eyespy attained a bit of notoriety and a couple of hits.

Now, I use a fabulous utility called Statcounter to log how many visitors the website gets and where they come from.

Months pass, and Sons & Daughters release an album. Over on Amazon.co.uk there's a review of it, written by a chap who was at the Bowlie Meetup in the Botanics, and he mentions Glasgow Indie Eyespy. It gave me a warm feeling of pride.

Time passes and in the September 2005 NME Student Guide, some journo, possibly Barry Richardson mentions Glasgow Indie Eyespy as one of the things to do in Glasgow and pimps the url. Again, warm feelings of pride and success.

At the start of November 2005 I took a week off work, I needed to use up accumulated holiday time. Most of the week was spent doing Plimptons business, but one of the first things I did in front of my computer was update Glasgow Indie Eyespy. This time I came up with some kind of method of ranking bands, broadly based on last.fm fans.

Last.Fm is basically a market research tool and a free one at that. It tells you how many people listen to any particular artist. Its not perfect, it only collects data from listeners who've signed up to it. Last time I checked it was about 70,000 people from all over the world. Its an adequate sample.

By my reckoning, checking the number of people who download Plimptons tracks and how much the last.fm stats change, the number of actual listeners in the real world is about 100 times more than last.fm counts.

When I'd finished updating the league, I pimped the site on Jockrock and got about 200 hits in a day, a new record for me.

In the following days I got fewer and fewer hits and the come down was a little depressing.

So I pimped it again, on a different messageboard, Alternative Nation. I'm scared of Alternative Nation cos there are some very nasty and violent people there, who will one day kill me. But they still logged onto Glasgow Indie Eyespy in their droves.

The next day, I did the same thing on the NME messageboards, and then the next day another board, and so.

A rather neat phenomenom, which I didn't expect so much, was other people talking about GIES on other boards without me pimping. The ball starts rolling.

Heck, it even got back to bowlie.com, which I've been banned from.

So today we got another first. Someone mentioned GIES on a Russian messageboard, and we're getting hits from Russia now. Zdrastrei ruski droogi!