[eli]

No doubt there are examples of people who built a fanbase online from nothing.

But I'm sure it helps a lot if you happen to write songs that appeal to nerds and then get featured on slashdot as a sort of novelty act. I don't see that working as well if you write earnest alt-folk love songs instead of songs about Mountain Dew.

Incidentally, there was a story about Coulton on NPR not long ago [1].

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/14/136279162/an-inter...

[Goronmon]

But I'm sure it helps a lot if you happen to write songs that appeal to nerds and then get featured on slashdot as a sort of novelty act.

Isn't that kind of the whole point though? You can't just be a no-name, release some music that is very similar to a large number of artists in a popular genre of music, and then expect to hit it big.

[lookhard]

But he worked so hard, don't you get it?

[shawnaroo]

The internet is not restricted to nerds anymore. Sure, your average musician isn't likely to get a mention on Slashdot, but there are about a zillion different forums/blogs/etc out there covering a zillion different topics, and if your music appeals to even a small subset of them you can get some pretty cheap advertising. And if your music is good, you can start to build off of that.