After the runaway success of the Arctic Monkeys, who built up their international following on the internet from their base in Sheffield, Sandi Thom, a 24-year-old Scot, is using the web to entertain nightly audiences put at more than 60,000.

Seating at the venue underneath her home in a Victorian terraced house in Tooting, south London, consists of six stools bought from Ikea for about £3 each.

Thom uses a webcam to record a nightly performance before broadcasting it on the net later in the evening. In the past eight days she has entertained more than 250,000 fans worldwide. By contrast, her live audiences usually total about 200 when she plays in clubs around Britain.

The blossoming success of Thom’s web tour illustrates how a new generation of unknown singers and bands are connecting with fans directly through the internet before achieving conventional chart success.

Earlier this year, the Arctic Monkeys’ first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, became the fastest-selling debut album of all time. Thom’s first album is released next month although her only single to date — I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker — failed to hit the top 40.

According to Thom, who has been likened to the singers KT Tunstall and Janis Joplin, the basement tour began because of the prohibitive cost of hiring minibuses and hotel rooms for conventional tours.

“A web tour is basically what you do when you have a lack of money and no car,” she said. “With the webcam, it’s a great opportunity to play in front of the whole world — and cost- effective.”

Audiences have grown strongly since just 70 people logged on to her website to watch her first (free) concert on February 24. Last Thursday night, the figure was 62,138, according to Streaming Tank, the web broadcast company that makes the show available on computers around the world. This is only about 3,000 less than the capacity of the Milton Keynes National Bowl.

Chris Dabbs of Streaming Tank said 42% of the audience was in Britain and 23% in America, with viewers as far afield as Pakistan.

Such figures pale beside those achieved by Madonna — 9m fans tried to log on to see her perform live at Brixton Academy in December 2000. Sir Paul McCartney won 3m viewers for his show at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1999.

Thom, originally from Banff, studied at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where she took advice from McCartney, its patron, to “keep it simple”.

Gareth Grundy, deputy editor of Q magazine, said: “Sandi isn’t on our radar screen yet, but this sounds impressive. Since the Arctic Monkeys, every record company is now trawling the internet trying to find the next band. Being on the internet is now a key first step for bands — people visit their pages time and again to check for something new.”

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