Darren Herman

With the pace of innovation increasing weekly, it’s pretty hard for anyone to really catch up or be cutting edge for more than a month or so. One of my favorite bands, 3 Days Grace, is out and about on a national tour and I wanted to see when they were playing New York City as I’d love to go and see them.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see a NYC tourdate on their website, but I did see an amazing page [for a band] that has a bunch of “web 2.0″ type mashups. Check it out for yourself. The page includes a map that fans can click on and enter their information regarding which show they’ll be attending, a social network around who is going to each show (with pictures on the main tour date page), and other elements of interactivity.

Zomba (record label) has done a great job of providing this service to 3 Days Grace – this is one of the first times I’ve seen any band do anything that allows fans to interact with their website that is not on a message board or chat room.

On a side note: I was on the way back from a 4 hour journey one afternoon and was listening to XM Satellite Radio. It happend to be a talk show and 3 Days Grace were discussing their upcoming self titled debut album (2003). I had never heard of the band before nor heard their hit song(s) but the interview was really intriguing. I decided to listen to all 45 minutes of the interview and then listen to the tracks that they played after their segment was over. Turns out, not only did I like the style of the band during the interview, but totally dug their music. I then went to the nearest store when I arrived back home in Saratoga Springs and bought their album in the local Borders. Turns out that radio promotion works…. who would have thought?