Meet George Pringle, the singer who looks on her career as an art project.

'The internet is like having a scrapbook I keep adding stuff to'

GEORGE PRINGLE IS COMING TO the end of a hard day's work making CDs. Actually, physically folding homemade sleeves for 300 copies of her debut EP, Poor EP, Poor EP Without a Name …. This is the future of music, and it has craft skills.

If artists like Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys represented the music of Web 2.0, using the possibilities of online interactivity to either further their label-based careers or hustle themselves into a deal in the first place, Pringle is among the vanguard of a new breed. The children of Web 2.1, quite possibly, for whom the internet doesn't represent the opportunity to compromise your way into traditional models of fame, but the chance to retain personal control over every aspect of your public image. Through her entirely self-maintained pages on MySpace, Blogspot and Flickr, she sells her homemade CDs, publishes her writing and displays her photography.

"I never really saw myself as a musician," says the well-spoken 23-year-old, who grew up in Chelsea, went to an all-girls boarding school in Worcester (where she formed a punk band with some "rough, tough boys" from nearby Maldon) and studied Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.

"I always wanted to do something that was like an art project with lots of components, so music's tied into my other artistic interests – making films, taking photos, keeping journals – these all formed my final projects at Uni.

"When I started out I was writing acoustic music for my MySpace, though, and I was really annoyed that it wasn't as fun as the things I was interested in, and the image I'd created for myself online. I wanted to make something a bit more modern, and the way I then designed my online image really helped inform the music in turn. It's a nice, consolidated way of expressing yourself creatively."

Given the technological means with which she was spreading her music, it made sense for Pringle to obtain a copy of the GarageBand editing software and begin setting her spoken-word pieces against a stark background of electronica and LCD Soundsystem-influenced post-punk samples.

"The internet is like having a scrapbook I keep adding stuff to, but one where I share work and where I get feedback from people while I'm making it," she says. "It was really interesting to see that some people who liked the acoustic stuff didn't like the electronic stuff, it really helped me visualise how I wanted to make my music. Whether they're good or bad reactions, it's like having a teacher or a lecturer's response to what you're creating."

Unsurprisingly, given the art school aesthetic which Pringle strives to emulate, one of her most admired bands is the Velvet Underground. She likes how they engaged with Warhol and other artists around them to create "an interesting cultural scene and a total creative experience, rather than just a restrictive muso kind of thing". Yet in other ways, this way of working is the exact opposite of what she does.

"It sounds really awful," she muses, "saying that you're autonomous and apart, but I've never really fitted into a scene. When I was in Oxford I didn't fit into the music scene there, and I've only just moved back to London so don't feel part of one here. I do kind of like that, but it makes it harder to mobilise other people who have the same approach. Mainly you just stumble across interesting stuff online, and although bands like Crystal Castles are creating a feeling on the net, it's a lot more autonomous, it's not a scene of real people. Besides, I think 'scenes' are still governed by the major labels and what they decide to put out; I genuinely believe that."

Ah yes, the major labels. Although she's hardly on a quest to ruin them, Pringle is in the privileged position of being able to critique them from afar. "People at record labels will just sign what they're told is the new thing, or peddle the same old ideas, so the internet's really good for opposing that sanitisation of culture," she says. "You really do feel like new bands you discover there are yours, and it helps that there isn't a poster for them on the tube every day.

"Big labels are good in that they give funding, but it's just sad that you have to either stand out astronomically to get signed, because the record industry's in such upheaval, or you have to conform and be very 'bankable'."

Now, though, what Pringle calls the new "cyber-DIY aesthetic" will allow her and artists like her to run their own careers from home. It's the less comfortable choice, "but that's what separates those who are doing it for fun from the people who really want to change people's ideas about music", she says.

"I think MySpace messed up the music industry, but it was the best thing to happen, to be honest. Band websites are the most redundant things now, unless they're really brilliant, but most are just boring and corporate. Everybody has the right to own a MySpace page and put their stuff up there, though, and a duty to keep it tidy and free from spam. In fact, I think MySpace should be paying the artists who are on there, because we continue to make it as popular as it is."

Until that day comes, though, those CD sleeves will keep being carefully folded.

• George Pringle supports Does It Offend You, Yeah? at King Tut's, Glasgow, on 27 March. Poor EP, Poor EP Without a Name … is available to buy from www.myspace.com/georgepringle, or download for free from RCRDLBL.com

Five ways to unleash your personality on MySpace

1 George Pringle describes her music as "Healing & EasyListening / Japanese Classic Music / Melodramatic Popular Song". She's having a laugh.

MySpace lets you describe your music from menu options ranging from straightforward (pop, punk, indie) to exotic (tropical, progressive) and faintly silly (melodramatic popular song). The exercise illustrates the absurdity of trying to pigeonhole music.

So, most MySpace pages with any wit or personality subvert the whole idea. Hence the number of bands described as "other/other/other". It's not helpful, but this is the point. It is, like all good art, about kicking against the constraints of the medium.

||76|| Pictures. Most people just use cover art or band shots on MySpace. But why not choose a picture that illustrates the song in some way, such as Pringle's Polaroids and film stills?

||54|| Lists of influences. MySpace gives you another opportunity to describe your sound, with its "influences" and "sounds like" panel. Most people just write a list of other bands they sound like. Pringle says: "Letters that never got sent, taps that drip and never stop, mixtapes that purr, game over – please try again, checked exercise books and 4B pencils, head pushed under the pillow pressing eyeballs until all the different colours come " etc. Which tells you more about her music than the newspapers which have just compared her to Lily Allen.

4 A blog. Some people post details of gigs, or what they've been up to. Pringle writes poems: "I dreamt of mimosa trees. The back of a holiday brochure. Lerici, La Spezia. I dreamt of the dead mouse that drowned in the millpond." Pretentious? Possibly, but very much in the spirit of her music.

5 DIY attitude. Pringle proudly proclaims that she is not signed to a label. Order her "poor EP without a name" and it will come wrapped up by George in a pretty red bow. Which is not something you get in HMV.