It finally happened. An anonymous musician cracked the major-label music biz on his own using the Internet. Specifically, a Santa-Monica-based computer graphics geek named Pill (a k a Scott McCall) started streaming his own techno music, and within a few months was contacted by Warner Bros. recording artist Seal, who recruited the twenty-nine-year-old to help with a few new tracks on a forthcoming CD. It is one of the first -- and certainly the most stunning -- examples of how the Web really will produce its own music heroes/success stories. And if other events in the last month are any indication, this is just the beginning of a long-predicted online music trend.

Yes, digital music has long been coming into its own; everyone hears about how Alanis or Bowie employs MP3 promotions. But there's never a buzz about the little people who did it their way online and succeeded. Did you know, for example, that a downloadable-only song finally made it onto a Billboard chart? Takeoutmusic.com reported that a track by Chris Cox and DJ Irene called "Something [for the DJ's]" debuted at the #42 spot on Billboard's Dance Club chart last month, beating out songs by Simply Red and Jamiroquai. Hey, it's a start.

A few other rags-to-riches stories are about to break as well: Garageband.com will be announcing the first winner of its $250,000 recording contract by the end of this year (more than 4,000 bands posted songs at the site in the hopes of impressing the thousands of fans who rate and review the music). Inspiring as that is, it gets better: "loser bands," who don't win the virtual battle of the bands competition, can also garner some serious attention now that former Beatles manager George Martin has joined the board of advisors (along with founder and ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison) -- and Martin's already expressed interest in a few bands.

That's exciting because it means that the music is key -- not the contacts, not the marketing money, not the name recognition. In a similar vein, Pill may have been lucky, and may have timed things just right, but ultimately it was his music that won him the gig. "From the day I started putting [my music] up [using Shoutcast technology] I started getting ICQ messages," explains Pill. "After about a month, my server was constantly packed. One day I got an email -- actually from [Seal's] buddy Charles Como. I read it and thought it was fake ... later that day I got a call from Seal! And I was like 'Whoa!' He was telling me how he always wanted to get into the techno scene. After that I just started inundating him with MIDI files, like, 'Hey check this out.' And where it stands now I'm getting publishing rights on two songs so far -- and that's like a big deal."

In case you're wondering: Pill is not a "professional" musician, and he doesn't use expensive equipment to make or broadcast his music. "All you need is a Soundblaster Live sound card, and a cheap PC," says the man who now is beginning to regularly dole out how-to advice to other hobbyist musicians. "The main muscle of my system is a $150 sound card." Pill compiled a simple playlist of about six hours of his own music, which he describes as sounding something like the music of Orbital. He then looped and streamed the songs using free software (check out the new www.radiospy.com site for more info) and disk space on a hard drive at work. After Seal voiced an interest, the two started trading music files -- even though Seal was still out on tour. "He recorded his voice in a microphone on his laptop, sent me the WAV file, and then I patched it in with the MIDI file," says Pill. "And that's the first time I heard his stuff to my music."

The story is all the more charming because Pill wasn't looking to attract collaborators; he was merely sharing his songs with the world. "With the Internet and the way technology is today, I don't have to go run around on tour and get a fanbase," he says. "I can let a PC chug in the corner twenty-four hours a day and little by little people turn on to it and hear it and like it."

It may not be a true meritocracy, but it's nice to know that technology really can help reward what would have been way-off-the-radar talent. It may not be big news now, but someday -- when the proverbial "next Ricky Martin" hails from the Web -- you can tell your kids about the good old days when it seemed so hard to swallow the idea that a guy named Pill could, er, Seal his musical fate online.

JAMES OLIVER CURY
(November 30, 1999)