Philly Pop/Rock band, SPiN, has established itself through touring, licensing their songs to TV and film, a #1 song on the iTunes Indie charts, buzz on tastemaker music blogs, and viral videos (Over 21 Million YouTube Views). They combine alternative rock with pop elements, and their sound blends that of classic acts like Queen and The Cars with modern favorites like Muse and Fall Out Boy. They engage nearly daily with their 40,000 social media fans and continually create new music and content.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with SPiN about the new music, continued challenges, changing tech and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
We’re a Philly band. We all grew up in and around the area and we work out of our studio in the heart of South Philly.
Our style is kinda genre-bending – elements of pop, classic rock, electro – influences from 80s, 90, 2000s, etc. We try to make sure each release has a certain theme to it. Our current album, for example, leans heavily towards an 80s pop, rock, dream pop type style and each song reflects a stage in a relationship from beginning to end; while the new EP we’re writing is gonna have more of an edgy retro vibe.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
Music is something that chooses you. We all started playing at a young age and can’t seem to get away from it. Little successes along the way; like our single “Too Late” grabbing over 1.6 Million Views on YouTube, keep us motivated as it shows someone’s digging what we’re putting out there.
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
Yeah, as we mentioned above, this one has a much more dance, pop, electronic vibe than previous releases. We were trying to accomplish complete world domination with it. We fell slightly short of that goal, so far.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
The music biz in general is a challenge. The competition keeps going up and up and of course it’s about who you know as much as it is about hard work. Technology has absolutely made it easier to reach people, but it also increases the amount of product out there (some shit, some amazing, and everything in between), making it harder to break through all the noise.
What was the last song you listened to?
We just watched the Video for Coldplay’s The Scientist, because it’s a cool-ass one-take video. Not as cool as the one we just released though, of course. 😉
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Streaming is awesome because you can instantly hear pretty much any song you can think of – but the quality isn’t quite as good. It’s been a minute since I personally listened to anything on CD. I think it depends on what you’re listening to – love Led Zeppelin or other classic rock on Vinyl for instance.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
We’re happy to be on all of them – don’t know if there is much of a difference between them. We prefer whichever one currently pays higher royalties!!
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
All the socials can be linked to from our website: SPiNRocks.com
We’re “@spinrocks” on all of them but YouTube, where we are “spinrockssocks” because someone stole our preferred handle. Bastard.
Anything else before we sign off?
Really appreciate you guys taking the time to interview us and for supporting us on this and our previous releases! Looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks of our new video for “Price of Love”. Real passion project on this one, as we filmed the entire video in one take with no edits or cuts. It took a big team of lots of tiny parts all operating as one to pull this off and we’re pretty excited about it. Check it here:
