Later today, Chuck Comeau from Simple Plan is expected to take part in the C2MTL conference and talk about the business side of music at “The Beat Goes On” panel. In preparations for this appearance, Chuck has been interviewed by La Presse on his thoughts on brands and their affects on the music industry.

You can either read the full article in French on LaPresse.com or read Chuck’s translated quotes below:

“I always thought that one day, the big brands like Coca-Cola would become the suppliers of music, that they would sign the artists themselves. It will be a war of content, and then – these brands still need to be cool, to be on the edge. When we started 12 years ago, it was like a crime to make a product placement in your music video. Today, it is common, it is even weird not to have them. Is it possible to go even further? I always said that one day we would have an album presented by Coke.” [Chuck on brands]

“The music industry is a good example of resilience. When it produces great changes, as it was the case in recent years, you have no choice but to be creative. People in the industry have complained for several years, but now they roll up their sleeves and find new ideas to stay relevant. Nevertheless, the music has never been so present in people’s lives. Music is more than ever a way for young people to define themselves.” [Chuck on the music industry and music in general]

“Could Facebook start signing bands and their music to the billions of people on their site? Why not! All these brands need music, movies, TV series, content for broadcast for their distribution channels that are extremely powerful and lose their purpose if they do not have the content to distribute.” [Chuck on the possible next level of the collaboration between music and social media]

“While others find that the marketing side and management is a burden, I always found it really interesting. There is no one who will be as concerned about your career as yourself.” [Chuck on his interest in the business side of music]

“Sometimes people offer you good amounts of money [for product placement], but if it does not work with our own brand and who we are as a band, it’s not cool for our fans. We must define what Simple Plan is and at the same time learn to reinvent ourselves and do new things.” [Chuck on staying true to the band's identity]

Simple Plan’s presence on online social media has always been one of the reason why this band has managed to keep such a great and close relationship with their fans. But sometimes, for some fans it can be rather complicated to tell if a profile on a certain social network is really the guys from Simple Plan or if it’s just another fake account.

Because of how many times I’ve seen fans actually interacting with various accounts who pretended to be someone else, I decided to try to put together a little guide that could help you out the next time you’re in a situation like that – wondering if said account really is Pierre/Chuck/Jeff/Seb/David or not.

Most artists nowadays have at least one primary official presence on the internet – their official website. So before you even start following or interacting with someone from the band on any social networks, check back on the official website – usually the websites offer a set of other official links to the band’s YouTube channel, Facebook profile, Twitter account etc.

With Simple Plan it’s quite easy – even though their official website doesn’t directly link to each of the band members’ profiles on Twitter, it does link to Simple Plan’s official Twitter – @simpleplan – which retweets each and every post that Simple Plan make on their personal profiles on Twitter, so it’s very easy to find them this way. Their Twitter handles are quite easy to remember – they always consist of the person’s name and surname – e.g. @seblefebvre.

Speaking of Twitter – the easiest way how to recognize an official profile of a well-known person is to look for the verified button [little blue dot with a white check mark in the middle] that is placed next to their names on their profile. The verification process that Twitter uses to determine real and official profiles is very complicated and can be pretty long – for example Pierre was the last of Simple Plan members to receive his (earlier this year). As of right now, all the members of Simple Plan are verified on Twitter.

example of Sebastien’s official Twitter profile accompanied with the verified button

However even the verified buttons tend to get faked by some people – by placing the image of the button onto their header, making it look like they are verified. Seems smart, but who are we kidding – if you’re still unsure about a verified button, there’s a simple way how to know it’s the real deal – just place your mouse over the button – if it’s real, a “verified account” notification will pop up.

Unfortunately not all other media have such an easy way how to recognize a fake as Twitter does. So with Facebook, Instagram or other networks, you have to be even more cautious.

One thing is clear – other than Simple Plan’s official Facebook account, an account for Seb’s music and Man Of The Hour, there are (nor will probably ever be) any other Facebook profiles of the guys that would be open for the fans. So if you have a “Pierre Bouvier” among your friends, chances are it’s not him. The guys like to keep their personal lives private.

With that being said, fake profiles on Facebook and Instagram can also be pretty easy to spot, if you look carefully at what and how they post – if the tone of their updates matches the way they usually interact. I’m sure you’ve already managed to get a grip of how the guys act and how they don’t, so you can tell right-away that for instance when someone starts posting in a very “fangirly” way – it will probably not be the real Jeff.

Same thing applies to photos. With official profiles it’s a given that they should give away stuff that you can’t find anywhere else – such as photos or videos. In fact they should be the first ones to post it [although there are exceptions]. So if you see very generic photos on a account of one of the guys that claims to be official, make sure to double check it.

Let’s take the (as of right now) fake “SimplePlan” account on Instagram as an example – thousands of people have been convinced in the past few months that this was indeed the real Simple Plan Instagram account. Why? Probably because they managed to grab the name while it was still available and kept on “impersonating” the band when replying to people. But just because a name of the account sounds like a real deal, it doesn’t mean the profile is actually real. With this particular Instagram profile, there’s a couple of its attributes that give its fakeness away:

example of the use of bad grammar at the fake “SimplePlan” Instagram account

• never posts new photos of the band – pictures on this profile are either from old photoshoots or they have been posted on the guys’ personal Instagrams earlier
• tags own photos
• pictures are either edited – not just in the typically “vintage” way we all know from Instagram, but by using Microsoft Paint [and trust me, if Simple Plan would put out edited pictures - e.g. with text on it, it would be well-made] – or “borrowed” from Tumblr
• uses bad grammar
• deletes some of the comments that suggest it’s a fake
• and finally: no official Simple Plan account/website ever links to it

On that note – Simple Plan are actually currently trying to contact the owner of this account (“SimplePlan” on Instagram) to try to get the name back and actually use it for the band’s purposes. So if you are the one in charge of it, please get in touch with their management – Coalition Entertainment.

If you’re already went through all the previous advice and still are skeptical about the profile, you can always try to find out if the profile’s real or fake from other fans or even better – from some already confirmed profile.

When it comes to Simple Plan, the guys reply to fans on Twitter a lot, in fact it’s the only social network where they do, so you can always ask the guys directly. Although sometimes getting such reply can take a long time because the guys get thousands of them every day, so when it comes to dealing with fake profiles, you can always count on their management – Coalition Entertainment – and ask Jocelyn who’s in charge of all things online. You can find her at @CoalitionMUS.

But just to help you out, on SimplePlan.cz you can already find an up-to-date list of all the current official profiles of Simple Plan that they frequently use online. You can see it here (or anytime right under the Internet section).

I hope the above stated advice were at least a bit useful to you and that hopefully you won’t get fooled by another account anytime soon. Just remember: double check everyone that you talk to online. Don’t wanna sound like your parents, but you never know who the person on the other side could be… it can always be a dog.

The latest issue of the Experience BMW magazine, which is distributed by mail to BMW vehicle owners in the Greater Montreal area also features a big article about Simple Plan. The article is bi-lingual (French and English) and Simple Plan are featured on 4 whole pages. The article includes a short interview with Sebastien, mostly about Simple Plan’s excitement of playing in their home country again in July at Festival La Gibelotte and Régates de Valleyfield.

Check it out in the gallery:

The VIMN International Media Networks today announced the most played music videos on 60 MTV channels all across the world in 2012. The highest spots on the list feature artists like Gotye, Carly Rae Jepsen, Maroon 5 or Katy Perry.

Among the list of 50 most played music videos was also Simple Plan’s video for “Summer Paradise” (feat. Sean Paul). MTV played this song over 10 000 times, for which Simple Plan have now received a Platinum award.

After receiving this exciting news, Chuck took to Twitter to thank everyone who helped the band make it this far: “Thank you so much for all the amazing support, MTV! And of course, thanks to all the Astronauts for being the reason why this could happened in the 1st place! You mean everything to us!

Congratulations!

Simple Plan’s drummer Chuck Comeau recently sat down again with Alter The Press’ Jon Ableson, to have a little more in-depth conversation about the just-released book “Simple Plan: The Official Story” and how it was reminiscing about the old days.

The two discuss the early beginnings of Simple Plan – and even mention things that had to be edited from the book, so that it wouldn’t be 500 pages long – for example the story of how they got Joel Madden to sing on their very first record.

Chuck also opens up about the times when SP recorded their debut album/ and how it wasn’t as funny and entertaining as it seemed on the DVD – actually being the exact opposite. Most importantly, Chuck talks more about the self-titled’s album not receiving as much success as earlier Simple Plan records – mostly in the US/, which resulted in the band not being able to tour in this country properly ever since.

And finally the interview also deals with the curious switch from K’Naan to Sean Paul as a guest on “Summer Paradise”.

You can check out the full interview by reading on (or check it on AlterThePress.com):

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This Sunday, December 9th, TVA will be broadcasting a special Christmas episode of a game show called On connaît la chanson that Simple Plan along with Marie-Mai will be a part of. You can now view the first revealed mini-sized picture from the taping and also three new teasers for the show, which revealed that Simple Plan will play at least 3 songs: Welcome To My Life, Jet Lag (feat. Marie-Mai) and Summer Paradise.

Check them out: teaser #1, teaser #2 & teaser #3