MySpace Statistics for New Hampshire Blue Grass Artists
I finished going through all the Bluegrass artists in New Hampshire, and here is what I found as of May 23rd, 2007:
There are 24 New Hampshire bands and artists that play Bluegrass style.
A solid 50% (12) of those artists fool around, while the other 50% (12) are serious. What I mean by that is that 50% of bluegrass artists haven't produced a CD or played a gig and told the world about it. 4% received radio play (that's 1) and 4% (again 1) recieved TV/film notice and mentioned it.
On myspace, 63 bands list bluegrass as an influence, but a number (39 in all) didn't have detectable influences or were someone's joke band that didn't have any music.
I was very surprised at the mismash of websites and the shocking lack of color taste that often produced pages with unreadable text. And these were gigging bands! Also, not everyone uses the "shows" feature on myspace when they have gigs. A user doesn't want to have to work hard to find out if you're playing somewhere or if you have a CD for sale. It should be listed on the front page!
Of the bluegrass bands that I heard, all had a professional sound and some played regionally as well as internationally, and even some of the bands just fooling around sounded great; they should start gigging. Only one band (Truffle) plays with a superstar act and mentioned it, and I suspect that the genre has as much to do with it as anything. Truffle's rock slant lends itself to larger venues because there are more Rock groupies than traditional Bluegrass groupies.
Overall, 65% of the bands I have covered are fooling around, and 33% are not really bands or artists at all.
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