Movements On Trying Not To Think Too Hard About Streaming Numbers

In the greater scheme of things, Californian quartet Movements are virtually a brand new band. Forming just three years ago, they have released one EP and one long player, and they are really just at the very start of their journey. Affable frontman Patrick Miranda and his band's first steps into the weird, wild, wonderful and often harsh music industry walk a very well-balanced line between youthful exuberance and real pragmatism.

"We are really just at the beginning of the bigger picture," he says. "Obviously all of us want to take this as far as we can possibly take it. I don't actually know if any of us know what that means yet or where we're going to end up going with it, but I think all of us want to end up making a living and do this full time. To be career musicians, that's really our main goal.

"Not that it's about money or fame or anything like that, we genuinely don't care about any of that, but we want to be able to do what we love and support ourselves doing that."

In a practical sense, he believes that to do this, and sustain it in the long-term, no band can be an island. It has to be more than four guys playing their instruments and writing songs. "To be honest, at first all of us got thrown into this, and none of us really knew what we were doing," he admits, "and to a certain degree we're learning every single day how to make the band profitable and then how to continue to grow and make it a legitimate career.

"So a lot of the long-term stuff is really just making sure that our team is really strong, making sure that our management and our agents, the promoters, the label and anyone who's working with us, everybody needs to be on the same page. Morale needs to be high, we all just need to be stoked about what we're doing, the whole team."

So far, all indicators point to the fact that the band and the team around them are getting things very right. The band are in heavy demand right across the world and their online statistics are quite astonishing for a new rock band. "The reception we've seen, just from releasing this record, has been unbelievable," he enthuses. "Our streaming numbers are crazy. Some of our songs are at one million streams, one of them is at two million streams, another one is getting pretty close to two million. It's off the charts!"

"On top of that, the shows have been incredible, we've just got back from Europe and the UK, and the reactions we got there were just as good as they are at home. Seeing that on the other side of the world is just unreal. It's just something we never imagined would be the case for us."

So how do you feel about the fact that if the band had formed 30 years ago, those one or two million streams, which net the band considerably less than one cent per stream, may actually have been one million sales? "Honestly, I'd never thought about it like that, but you're damn right," Miranda says with conviction. "We would be literal millionaires if we'd started 30 years ago!

"It's all good though, we're realistic about that and we don't get too caught up in that stuff."

The band are making their first-ever trip to Australia in mid-late August. It's fantastic to see an American band at the beginning of their career already making an extensive run Down Under, and what's just as good is that they are bringing an excellent local band along with them, Newcastle's Eat Your Heart Out.

"I love that band, I believe in that band so hard," he states passionately. "We collaborated on a song last year and for us to be coming all the way to Australia on our first album, and do it with those guys, we're stoked."