Record sales may have plummeted over the past seven years, but more than a handful of innovative artists have managed to stay afloat in a rapidly sinking record industry. With album sales continuing to tank in record numbers-sales dropped 7.2 percent in 2005, according to Rolling Stone-and labels still finding difficulty adapting to the age of iPods and legal downloading, the music business may have finally found a way to boost its sales. Since a peak in 2000, album sales have fallen by nearly 30 percent, according to Rolling Stone. Yet bands like The Fray and OK Go have made the leap from obscurity to superstardom in a matter of months-or even more rapidly-with the help of television's hottest dramas and the Net's most visited websites.

Denver native members of The Fray spent much of the last two years playing to 500-person clubs and small theaters across the country-a feat made remarkable by the fact the group had received little, if any, commercial radio support in each city it visited. In contrast, the band, whose triple-platinum How to Save a Life peaked at No. 14 on Billboard, is currently preparing for a two-month summer tour of 30,000-person amphitheaters across the U.S. and Canada, with OK Go scheduled to open the bulk of the dates.

Despite stints opening for both Weezer and Ben Folds, The Fray remained virtually unknown before 2006, with its first single, "Over My Head (Cable Car)," gaining only modest success on mainstream radio. Yet just as that single began slipping from the charts in early 2006, the title track from How to Save a Life was featured in episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs. Quickly, and more astonishingly, without ever being released as a single, the song began to climb the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The band quickly released "How to Save a Life" as its next single and, in late 2006, ABC made the song an integral part of a massive advertising campaign for the new season of Grey's Anatomy. Since then, the single has netted over one million online downloads, and the group has received two Grammy nominations.

Just as Grey's Anatomy jumpstarted The Fray's modest career, the band has transformed the already popular hospital drama into a more-sought-after venue for airplay than MTV's Total Request Live.

The Fray is not alone in its alternatively fueled success. Artists like Mat Kearny, KT Tunstall and Snow Patrol (all featured prominently on Grey's), OK Go and Ben Lee have all seen their record and ticket sales skyrocket in the last year without much help from commercial radio. Sales of Lee's Awake is the New Sleep have risen steadily following the use of his single "Catch My Disease" on Grey's and a series of Dell advertisements.

OK Go's online grassroots success story has been particularly extraordinary given the band's absence from radio and television. Instead, the innovative Chicago band turned to the Internet and online video-sharing giant YouTube to spread its music. To date, the band's distinctive low-budget, homemade music videos featuring intricately choreographed dance routines and obvious lip-syncing have ratcheted tens of millions of hits. The success of OK Go's online-only music videos has translated into a 2007 Grammy Award, a performance on the MTV Video Music Awards and a rapid climb up the Billboard Top 200 Album chart.

The notions of promoting a new single or album online or on television shows are nothing new. Teen dramas like Beverly Hills: 90210 and The OC have long histories of using that day's radio hit during broadcasts to gain popularity with the target demographic. Today, though, the musical tables have turned, and traditional venues for music promotion like MTV and commercial radio find themselves racing to play the latest hits made famous on primetime dramas and online music videos, rather than vice versa.

As record labels continue to make painful adjustments in an age where new music is heard through cell phones and national chains like Tower Records are forced to close their doors, primetime television's thriving soundtrack may be just the breath of air the drowning music industry so desperately needs.