What the new world looks like

Do you remember Koopa, the band who - a year ago - achieved a small footnote's worth of fame by becoming the first unsigned band to achieve a Top 40 hit on downloads alone?

Now they're back, having signed a deal with Pied Piper Records. We're not quite sure what to make of all of this. With no disrespect to Pied Piper, it's hardly like they've hooked themselves a massive deal; so it's not as if they've turned their "fanbase on the internet and on the live circuit" into a huge contract. And - despite having managed to scrape into the top 40 last year - they clearly have decided they're not going to do much more under their own steam without a contract.

So, in effect, these early harbingers of the New Download Era have effectively abandoned the internet and gone back to the old way of doing things, signing with a small label to build up a career. The other end of the music industry from Radiohead, things might not be changing so quickly...