There is a revolution heading towards the Official Album Charts this Spring and it could be just the opening a lot of up and coming bands are looking towards to break through in to the national conscience. Martin Talbot, the Chief Executive of the Official Charts Company has shared the news that the streaming of albums is going to be taken in to consideration when the charts are compiled.
This is definitely good news for the likes of Mark Ronson who's Uptown Funk has been streamed over two million times a week but it is a door ajar for a band with a savvy social media presence to get a chart hit without the backing of major label marketing.
This is where the likes of Track and Field could find themselves as your favourite new band. Coming out of the rubble of punk and thrash metal bands, they pooled members from The Plight and Cyvoid to bring their own slant on emo and indie rock to the burgeoning Leeds music scene.
From Alt-J to Eagulls, Pulled Apart by Horses to Wild Beasts, it seems that Leeds is at the forefront of bringing a new sound to the nation and Track and Field could be the next to make the leap from local scenesters to national radio. The inclusion of 'World' on Radio 1's Rock Show is the first step and it is this exposure that will help boost their streaming potential.
This is particularly satisfying for a band that is from the Myspace generation. Founding member of Track and Field, Jonathan Kirk, says that social media is the champion of new music.
"We've been putting up band pages online since Geocitites. Band flyers, gig promotions and blog posts are nothing new to us, just the platforms that keep changing. Absolutely anyone can make an artist page on any social network and you end up with an amazing network of great bands."
The Arctic Monkeys were famously fired to stardom on the back of internet fan sites and now Track and Field have a chance to follow their Yorkshire contemporaries as their debut EP You Are My Home becomes available on streaming giant Spotify and a UK tour in the offing to help spread the word.
This has been music to Kirk's ears, "Soundcloud is a brilliant platform for us to first test the waters with our music and raise the band's profile in our early stages. Everybody likes to stream music, it's convenient. I think that if we had to wait until people were able to purchase a physical release of our songs or to attend a show to first hear our music then we would probably have taken much longer to escalate than we have."
So it is in to the recording studio for Track and Field and the like as they look to have albums ready for release to coincide with the spring changes in the Album chart. It may not be a dramatic alteration that upsets the established pop nature of the beast but the tide could be changing and there will be a slow drip feed of bands that appear without any previous national promotion.
Track and Field may be among the first to cross the line and whilst they strive to "create something that they're proud of, that they can enjoy along with others, play good shows and make great records", there is now the added carrot being dangled that if they hit the right notes online, being everyone's 'favourite new band' could be added to their CV.