Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Net Profits

What: Lvlocalmusicscene.com's fifth anniversary concert featuring Clockwise, Corner Stone, By Deaths Design, FFI and Yesterdays Tomorrow.

When: 6 p.m. Saturday.

Where: House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.

Admission: $7.

Information: 632-7600.

When Las Vegas rock band Yesterdays Tomorrow posted its first recording online, the quintet probably hoped a few Southern Nevada music fans might discover their sound. They never expected to generate an international following.

Yet when the melodic, genre-bending band received a report on its song's recent Internet activity, bassist Mike McHugh was shocked by the results.

"We got our weekly summary and it tells you who's been on, in what states and what countries," McHugh said. "And we had people in Poland, the United Kingdom and Canada listening to our song. We have no idea how they got it, but they did.

"It's all thanks to the Internet. It makes it so anyone in the world can listen to us."

Indeed, the Internet has provided an amazing boost for aspiring acts, particularly helping those without labels to support them with promotion and marketing.

Saturday night, the primary site responsible for spreading the word about local bands www.lvlocalmusicscene.com celebrates its fifth anniversary with a 6 p.m. concert at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.

On the bill are five Las Vegas acts that have benefitted greatly from exposure on the site: Clockwise, Corner Stone, By Death's Design, FFI and Yesterdays Tomorrow. Utah musician Jeremy Williams is also scheduled to perform. Tickets are $7 to the all-ages show.

Jeff Higginbotham, who owns and operates lvlocalmusicscene.com, said he has seen the Internet drastically change the game for bands getting started in the business.

"Before the Internet, they had to use complete creativity to get noticed," Higginbotham said. "Now with the use of the Web and streaming media, it opens the door for so many things.

"Bands used to stay in their local market and try to blow up in their hometown first. Now they have the means to be known regionally, nationally and even worldwide right away."

Higginbotham's site provides nightly listings of local shows, a guide to Southern Nevada's many venues and a forum for discussion on local music.

Lvlocalmusicscene.com also offers three options for bands wishing to participate. The basic package is free, and provides a band page featuring a bio, a photo, a listing of show dates and a link to the act's own website.

For $20, bands can also post three songs at a time, in both downloadable mp3 and streaming Real Audio formats. And for $50, bands are guaranteed two featured spots on the lvlocalmusicscene.com front page.

The site -- the most significant of its kind in Southern Nevada -- is home to 236 acts, most of them active and a few in the "Old Folks Home" for retired bands.

"I always try to push new bands or bands that I might just get in contact with to get on the site," Randall Logan, singer of Corner Stone, said. "Because whether you've got your own site or not, you can list all your show dates there, have your songs available, pictures, bio and stuff like that.

"I tell them, 'There's no reason why you should not be on this site.' "

Corner Stone has also received inquiries about its music from overseas. The rap-rock band even sold one of its self-produced CDs to a fan in Japan who discovered them on garageband.com.

"(The Internet) gets your music to places where under normal circumstances it would never go," Logan said.

In addition to linking its own website off its page on lvlocalmusicscene.com, hardcore band By Death's Design promotes its site -- www.bydeathsdesign.net -- on flyers it distributes in and out of town.

"I made some flyers with our Web address on them and when we went to Flagstaff (Ariz.) to play I handed them out," Josh Edwards, guitarist for By Death's Design, said. "And when we got back into town, we had an incredible amount of hits on there."

Logan said the ability to post music online is an essential resource for unsigned acts such as Corner Stone.

"It helps a lot, especially when you're an unsigned band and you're not getting heavy radio rotation or sometimes no rotation at all," Logan said. "It's hard to get people to come out and check out something that they don't know anything about.

"The Internet has given people the chance to go online and listen to some of the tracks. It makes it a lot easier for people who normally wouldn't be getting any attention at all."

Though Corner Stone's website, www.cornerstonehome.net, already ranks as one of the most complete local band sites, Logan said the pages will soon undergo a face-lift, under the direction of new webmaster Scott Herhold, also a guitarist in the band.

"He's pretty computer-savvy. He was into computers before he joined the band," Logan said. "It seems like every band nowadays has at least one person maintaining their website for them. And you're more guaranteed to have it updated when you need it to be when they're in the band."

By Death's Design recently signed to an independent local label, Embryo Records. But Edwards said the Internet continues to be their primary source of new fans.

"I just got an e-mail from a kid in Brazil who came across our mp3," Edwards said. "Five years ago, we didn't have these sort of resources at our disposal."

Several other local acts, including the Higher (Fiddler Records) and the Killers (Lizard King Records), recently signed record deals, in part a product of their presence on the web, according to Higginbotham.

"I get e-mails from labels all the time asking me who the better bands are in town," Higginbotham said. "In the past, I think they would just go by the buzz. Now they have a place they can go to read about and hear all the local bands."

Higginbotham's site features a streaming radio station, which includes music by many of the bands on lvlocalmusicscene.com.

Higginbotham has also launched similar websites in six other markets: Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego and Tucson, Ariz.

Saturday night, though, it's all about his hometown, as Las Vegas celebrates hissite's fifth anniversary.

"It should be a great show. We're stoked that Jeff asked us to play," Edwards said. "It's a real diverse bill, which is cool."

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