Joshua Radin's new album, Simple Times, was released last week. The American singer-songwriter, who comes over as a sort of cross between Elliot Smith and Jason Mraz, is by no means a household name, but what he is doing and how he is going about doing it is cleverer than cleverness itself.

Hailing from Ohio, Radin was first signed to Sony, which released his debut album, We Were Here, in 2006. It was well-received and all was going well until Radin had a listen to the radio and a look at the TV, and decided to walk out of his major label deal and go it alone.

What he surmised was that popular TV programmes, with their audience figures in the millions, were the new MTV and effectively the new radio. He saw how Snow Patrol had made a huge dent in the US market by virtue of getting Chasing Carson to Grey's Anatomy. Radin also saw how critically lauded, big marketing- spend bands struggled to trouble the lower reaches of the chart.

Last year, when Radin went to record Simple Timesoff his own bat, he had a clear idea of how he would market it.

"We put the record out on iTunes three weeks before it was in the stores," he says. "We didn't do any press; Rolling Stone didn't even have time to review the record. We were going: ' Grey's Anatomy, you want some songs? Scrubs, you want some songs?' And all of them took, like, six songs. Obviously, press is powerful, but it's a lot more powerful to have your song on Grey's Anatomy."

The result is that all 11 tracks on Simple Timeshave already been used on either a popular TV show or a film. It's the very first time anything like this has ever happened – TV shows such as House, Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs have all been busy promoting Josh Radin's album.

It’s easy to see the attraction. Radin’s music is emotionally affecting without being too obtrusive. Which is not to damn him with faint praise – Radin is abundantly talented.

This is a new sort of “viral” popularity. People find Radin’s name on the fan/message boards of the shows that have featured his songs and go to either his website (which gets well over a million hits per month) or to his MySpace page (18 million listens to date). Nor did the lack of any record company backing stop him from selling out venues such as London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

Radin was a latecomer to music – he only recorded his first song aged 30. He had previously been a screenwriter. He had grown up with the music of Paul Simon, Cat Stevens and James Taylor, but only began to write his own songs after learning to play the guitar by playing Bob Dylan tunes.

It's easy to see where he got his atypical approach from: the first song he ever demoed was Winter. Radin was a college mate of Zach Braff (one of the stars of Scrubs) and he asked Braff to give the song a listen. Winterwas then prominently featured in Scrubs.

Response to Winterwas strong and led to his major label deal with Sony. The sales figures show that a song's exposure on a show such as Grey's Anatomyor Scrubscan increase sales by 200 per cent.

But it’s got to be a particular song and a particular artist. The song can’t be well-known or already a hit, as it will carry too much baggage, and the performer must be somewhat unknown, as name recognition can get in the way. Which is why Radin fits perfectly.

Already a big name in TV and film, Radin knows that his upside- down approach has resulted in his music being well known “before I really found my stage legs”. But he has made this micro-niche market his own. With many others due to follow.

** Simple Timesis out now. Joshua Radin plays Dublin's Academy on October 4th