Kate Walsh claims she is just an average girl that recorded an album in her friend’s spare bedroom and then topped the iTunes charts.
According to this Evening Standard article:
It was recorded at a cost of “a few hundred pounds” in the Brighton home of producer Tim Bidwell, who created a sound-insulated vocal booth in his bedroom with velvet curtains he bought from Debenhams.
Additionally:
In the last few days around her album Tim’s House has sold around 6,000 copies and the number of plays on her MySpace site has topped 150,000.
[…]
Now living in Brighton, Walsh is planning to license her album to a major record company “to keep control” of her own work.Her manager Jonathan Morley said: “The record labels are queuing up to sign her now. She has a sweet voice and is a great song writer. Her work is original, it’s not over produced and it’s pretty raw and that’s what gives it a lot of appeal.”
Say what you want about the obvious PR spin on her new album - the truth is she is clearly representing the future of songwriters. With technological hurdles easier to overcome, many songwriters are now able to forego the record label advances and record on their own as they have the finances available.
Several years ago, singer-songwriter (and current Britney Spears love interest) Howie Day worked on his first studio album a song or two at a time. When he ran out of studio money, he would go out on a small tour - save up some more money, and come back to keep recording.
What results is an artist in control of their masters and in a position of leverage with the distributors. This is great!
Obviously there is some PR spin to this article, but by and large this is a great indicator of things to come.
More Kate
Check out her album “Tim’s House” at 
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