Net Gains: the music industry may fear the Net but artists are finding new routes to success

YOU can't buy it, watch it on television or even hear it on the radio but Cee Lo Green has a monster hit on his hands.

The R&B singer's song F**k You! is a blend of pure funk-soul uplift and extensive swearing so catchy that I find myself singing it in the most inappropriate places. And I am not alone; people who have heard it through the internet adore it – in their millions.

It is a prime example of the prevalence of music on the web and how it has taken the guesswork out of hitmaking. Record companies no longer need to send a grovelling plugger to Radio 1 and pray to every god going for a spot on the A-list.

Over the 48-hour period after Green's song first appeared on YouTube last month it was watched over a million times. The number of people who have viewed it now is over six million. Superlative accolades such as "global top favourite video" and "worldwide most discussed video" make it obvious that enough people will buy it on its official release on Monday for it to earn the traditional status that everyone still understands – a hit in the UK singles chart.

The internet was supposed to have killed the music business by now, but single sales are enjoying a golden age, according to Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company. The number of individual tracks people pay to download has risen from about 90 million in 2007 to 150 million last year, and are expected to top 170 million by the end of this year.

"It's so much easier to buy a song now than it was even three or four years ago," says Talbot. "Once, if you liked a tune you had to remember it and wait until you next passed a record shop. Now you can use your laptop, your smartphone … and download a track instantly without even thinking about it."

Of course the people who sell music want the process to be as painless for us consumers as possible. The now ubiquitous free download is almost always offered for the price of our e-mail address, so they can inform us directly about forthcoming albums, singles and live appearances that we have to pay for.

The publicists – and in some cases the artists themselves – also want us to be their virtual friends on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, although the relationship is pretty one-sided as we laugh at their jokes and are marshalled to vote for them at awards ceremonies, yet meet with icy silence if we attempt a two-way conversation.

Nevertheless, this is a new kind of access, more immediate and seemingly transparent than the traditional publicist-approved media interviews or promotional videos. Now we know from the horse's mouth what kind of pillows Kanye West sleeps on (they're fur) and that 50 Cent really is as big a moron as he appears.

Those who do talk back, however, also reap the rewards. Stephen Manderson, aka Hackney rapper Professor ("Pro") Green, currently has more than 500,000 Facebook friends, far more than Kylie Minogue. After gigs, the Professor goes straight onto Twitter, talking to the fans who attended. "I like it because I'm in control – my words can't be twisted," he tells me. "The label doesn't have any say in what I say. I'm sure they get quite worried sometimes, but I haven't had my wrist slapped yet."

Green only wishes it were easier to keep up with all the new ways there are for him to talk about his music. So far his record company is posting limited updates on his behalf on his Ping profile – Apple's new mix of music and social networking, which had decidedly lukewarm reviews when it launched earlier this month. It remains to be seen whether Green or other notables will also be attracted to the forthcoming Pic-Nic Village, another social music site being launched by Big Chill festival founder Pete Lawrence, and he hasn't touched Mflow, the service billed as "Twitter for music" when it arrived to some fanfare in April. But on the more established sites, his chattiness has really paid off. He befriended Lily Allen on Facebook before he had even signed a record deal. She asked to hear a demo of his song Just be Good to Green and volunteered to sing on it without any record company involvement. "She did it for all the right reasons," says Green.

"I doubt Pro or Lily would take too kindly to being forced into a collaboration by their record company," says Sam Evitt, the Professor's marketing man now he's at Virgin Records – who were no doubt thrilled to have a Top 5 hit come their way without having to do very much at all.

The internet can even tell them what to do next. In the week Green's album, Alive Till I'm Dead, was released, the track Monster climbed to No 80 in the iTunes download chart – which is how Evitt knows which song to release as Green's next single next week.

Another heavy tweeter, English electronica performer Imogen Heap, learned through the site that she had enough fans in Indonesia to justify a one-off gig for 4,000 in Jakarta last March. "That was the power of what I need to harness, this incredible word of mouth," she said.

Meanwhile, McFly are going to extreme lengths to tackle a problem they faced with their last album.

Millions of copies of Radio:Active were given away with a newspaper in 2008 but because it was then individually licensed to other record labels worldwide, it didn't reach Spain until nearly 18 months later. In the interim it is certain to have been downloaded illegally by thousands of frustrated potential buyers around the world, losing labels a potential fortune.

So the next album, Above the Noise, is to be made simultaneously available worldwide to subscribers to their new website, a "Super City" at mcfly.com which the band's Tom Fletcher assures me is "like nothing else on the internet. It looks absolutely incredible".

Launching tomorrow, for 6 a month or 40 a year it offers inclusive advance downloads of all their new music as well as a lot more. "We each have our own 'virtual rooms', where I'll be sharing new demos before the rest of the band have even heard them, and Danny (Jones] will be uploading his dance music," says Fletcher. "Subscribers earn points for things like getting involved in webchats and uploading photos, and the most active will get phone calls or to hang out with us at soundchecks, for example."

It sounds like a stalker's paradise. As with Professor Green's tweeting, it also appears to cut out the middle man – the record company. Although McFly are signed to Universal, they paid for the website out of their own pockets.

So with manufacturing and distribution costs minimal for downloads, and the lines of direct communication open, who needs record labels? The artists online at Pledgemusic.com don't think they do.

They're offering unique experiences at a hefty price in order to fund the recording of their next masterpieces. How about post-punks Gang of Four's CD, several books and a phial of their own blood for 45? A microphone signed by Busted/Fightstar man Charlie Simpson for 150? Or a private burlesque striptease from New York rapper Princess Superstar for a mere $10,000? She's offering three if you're feeling flush.

It's a novel way of getting what everyone is desperate for in this deafening digital free-for-all: attention. As Martin Talbot of the Official Charts Company says: "You may not need a record company to make and distribute your single but because anyone can release a song now, there's so much more music out there that it's increasingly difficult to stand out. You need help to get your head above the parapet."

It sounds like the marketing muscle of a major record label is what's required. The more things change, the more they stay the same.