I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. It's a funny thing — it seems with each month and year that goes by, the ways in which the Internet has affected the music industry are becoming more and more apparent.

While many changes have been obvious (like sales), many have sat quietly and gone unnoticed by the majority of the population — like the way an artist or band transitions from obscurity to their moment in the spotlight. If fame can traditionally be allotted to some proverbial 15 minutes of note, then surely with music it has become closer to a solid 90 seconds.

With the exception of a roster of legacy bands still touring and producing since their beginnings in decades past, there are almost no bands today that have come into prominence before the Internet boom.

One rare exception I've found is Alberta's Social Code, a band that got their start in 1999 as Fifth Season, formed by singer Travis Nesbitt and bassist Logan Jacobs. The year 2003 saw them change their name to Social Code, sign to Interscope Records, and begin work on their debut, A Year At The Movies.

Leading up to that was a lot of hard work, however, the likes of which make the boys in Social Code an authority on how to make an entrance into the world of rock stardom. The band stopped into London in August, and I got a chance to speak to Nesbitt and guitarist Morgan Gies all about it.

"When we got our first deal, record companies actually signed you to develop you," Nesbitt told me outside the London Music Hall. "So they would sign you to a single- sheet contract saying, 'We're going to develop you, and we get first right of refusal on the first record that you guys do.' So what they do is they dump a little bit of cash into you, and then they send a producer up and you start to work together, and if you come up with something good, then they'll sign you."

This practice was long ago thrown out of the window, Nesbitt went on to say — one of a number of ways in which a band's development has changed.

"It's just getting smaller and smaller," he shrugged. "So now what bands are forced to do is exactly what we did: be an independent label, go into your basement and record your own record. And develop yourselves, figure it out yourselves. So it's just different … maybe it's better, maybe it's worse, it's just different."

"If Led Zeppelin was out now, they would never make it," said Gies. "I read somewhere it wasn't until their second or third record before [they became profitable]. If that had happened these days, they would have been dropped from their label, and that would have been it."

Ten years on, the boys admit touring has changed quite a bit, too.

"On this record, we wanted to do the right tours, so we didn't want to just go out and tour our faces off in Canada," Nesbitt began. "So for us, it's like, 'Look, if we're going to go out and tour, it better be the right tour.' That's the thing that we've figured out nowadays, is that 'no' is sometimes better than saying 'yes' to everything. It's kind of strange.

"The old us probably would've done Warped Tour for a couple of weeks and then jumped on with Theory Of A Deadman for a couple of weeks, and then flew over to the east coast and played a show with whoever, you know what I mean? It burns through money." "There's also being an independent, and having to think about the budgets and stuff like that," Gies pointed out. "When all the money you bring in has to go and pay itself back, it's really important that you're mindful."

That said, Social Code are currently playing a couple of gigs in Indonesia in support of their latest release, Rock 'N' Roll. To hear it, head over to their website at SocialCodemusic.com and watch their journey unfold on Twitter.com/SocialCode.

And be sure to check out the Music Recommendations thread on our FSU social network to see what the guys told me they've been listening to lately. I'm out of words.