Get Ready To Get Poked: Here Come The “Facebook Musicians”

noah | July 20, 2007 3:30 am
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Who knows if this backstory is true, but after last year’s “Arctic Monkeys were made huge by MySpace” chatter it was bound to be the brainstorm of some intrepid music publicist: A “classical boy band” called Blake that claims to have met on Facebook has signed a five-album, £1 million (USD$2.05 million) deal with Universal Music Group. (Because, after all, meeting on Facebook is a sign that a relationship is in it for the long haul, right?) From the Telegraph:

The four-piece of former choristers signed a five album classical music deal with Universal last month.

Stephen Bowman, 25, from Bath, Jules Knight, 25, from Sussex, Dominic Tighe, 24 from Devon, and Oliver Baines, 24, from Wiltshire met through friends on Facebook three months ago when they discovered they shared a love of classical music.

The quartet of music and drama graduates then tracked down Daniel Glatman, former boss of the boy band Blue, through the site.

They sent him a message asking if he would be prepared to become their manager. After auditioning the band he signed them immediately.

Mr Glatman negotiated the Universal deal following a bidding war.

He said : “They have an unbelievable combination of talent, looks and chemistry.” …

Stephen Bowman said the group knew of each other through school, choirs and theatrical productions, but first made contact on Facebook.

“We then all happened to be at a party in London,” he said.

“When a guy started playing the piano, it came naturally to us to start to harmonise when he began to play Moon River.

“We sang just one song together but the sound just clicked instantly, it was remarkable.”

A heartwarming story. (People still sing “Moon River” at parties? Wild.) Whether it’s actually true or not is still up in the air–for example, my searches for a “Dominic Tighe” between the ages of 23 and 26 yielded nothing, which makes me wonder if there’s at the very least some Trixter-like age-shaving going on–but I already can feel myself dreading the torrents of band spam I’m going to be getting from hopeful Mancini songbook crooners in Blake’s wake.

Facebook spawns first boy band [Telegraph]