The Superhighway to Musical Stardom

Sept. 8, 2007 — -- There is a revolution happening in the music world. The Internet has changed what we listen to and how we listen to it. Whether it's from up-and-coming stars or established bands that have been in the business for decades, the Web now seems to be the driving force behind what we hear coming out of the music industry. More people are turning to MySpace to find the next big star, and YouTube to watch and rewatch their favorite music videos. And musicians themselves are logging on to their computers to form connections with their fans.

One band that finds itself right in the middle of this Internet music revolution is My Chemical Romance. Only six short years ago, lead singer Gerard Way was a wannabe comic book artist working in New York City. He says it was out of the 9/11 tragedy that My Chemical Romance was born. "Riding the train home that day, there were all these businessmen calling their girlfriends and wives and asking them to marry them or saying, I'm gonna quit my job and do something meaningful," says Way. "And so it kind of hit me. I want to do something really meaningful. So I started a real band, and we have real practices and as soon as we had five songs, we started playing, and just didn't look back."

It wasn't long before this alternative rock punk band had gained widespread notoriety, much of which came from the Internet. Way says when the band was starting out, they would play little shows and give out their CDs for free. Soon they looked to the Internet to help get their sound out even more.

It wasn't just their music that was getting noticed online. Their videos became viral as well. They have two of the four most-watched videos on all of YouTube, with nearly 65 million hits. Gerard Way sees the Internet as a tool for listeners to find exactly what they want to hear. "The Internet in a lot of ways directly represents what people want to see because it's all based on choice. So they're choosing to watch this little underdog band, kind of get bigger and bigger."