Sep 7th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | 1 Comment
(cross-posted from my Globe and Mail blog)
Given the success that some YouTube “stars” have had — with Dutch singer Esmee Denters signed to a boutique label run by Justin Timberlake, and Ysabella Brave also signed to a recording contract — it’s not surprising that some record labels would try to do an end-run around the process and create a YouTube “sensation” out of whole cloth.
That appears to be what happened with Marie Digby, a young singer who was recently signed to a recording contract with Disney’s Hollywood Records. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the 24-year-old singer was already working with the record company before posting any of her cover versions of popular songs to the video-sharing site.
Her appearances on TV shows and radio shows, for example — which apparently occurred after they saw her YouTube videos — were booked through a record company executive, and the story says that the record label was also involved in choosing the songs she posted to YouTube.
Crass? Yes. Surprising? Hardly. As Wall Street Journal blogger Kara Swisher put it: “Hollywood lies again; also just in — birds fly, fish swim.”
For many YouTube watchers a big part of the appeal of finding someone like Ms. Digby is that they are outside the traditional star-making machinery, and are therefore more authentic and natural. To find out that this isn’t the case often ruins the magic (although Lonelygirl15 continued to be popular once it was revealed to be fake).
Ms. Digby isn’t even the first to be involved in such a scheme: last year, a Scottish singer named Sandi Thom appeared on the scene, playing songs with her band from her apartment and streaming them over the Internet, and after attracting as many as 100,000 viewers (allegedly) she was signed to a recording contract — except, of course, that she had already been signed to a contract before the performances began.
In a post on her MySpace blog, Ms. Digby maintains that the Wall Street Journal story was blown out of proportion (although she doesn’t deny that she was working with a record company before posting her material to YouTube). She says:
“Here’s Lesson 1 for me in Media - The writer will use whatever quote he wants of yours to make it fit his ‘angle’. This loser was desperate for a good story… he knew what he wanted to write before he ever even talked to me.
The guy’s angle is this : that I am a complete phony and fake and a pawn of my record label in some brilliant marketing scheme. IS this guy completely insane. You think it’s that easy? That you get signed and suddenly everything’s taken care of for you!!!??”
Ms. Digby goes on to say that:
“What hurts the most is that this loser took every genuine thing i said and made it sound like I am acting, that this whole thing is scripted. The dude is desperate to be onto the next ‘ lonely girl’ or whatever.. i’ve actually never seeen that but its obvious that’s what he wanted me to be.”
Although some commenters on MySpace and YouTube have denounced her as a fraud, a number of fans have posted comments of support.
Is Ms. Digby a fake? That’s difficult to say. Her version of events seems to be that she developed the YouTube campaign in an attempt to keep the record company’s interest, while the WSJ tries to make the case that the whole thing was orchestrated by the label. The bottom line is that we may never know the “real” story, now that YouTube has become a subsidiary of the Hollywood department of smoke and mirrors.
Jonathan Coulton — who refers to himself as an “authentic Internet superstar” — has some perspective on Ms. Digby on his blog, in which he describes her as being “clotheslined by the thin line between grassroots and astroturf.” Nice line.
Sep 6th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | 1 Comment
(cross-posted from my Globe and Mail blog)
The cover of the New York Times Magazine last weekend looked like it was selling a feature story about a religious guru, with a photo of a large, bearded man sitting crosslegged in a field, wrapped in a white blanket. And there’s no question that Rick Rubin — the music producer who was the subject of the cover story — is seen as a guru by many in the industry.
Rubin’s abilities have helped to create acts such as The Beastie Boys, and rescued fading stars such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond from oblivion. But can he save the entire industry? That’s the subject of the NYT piece, which goes into some detail about how iTunes and file-sharing have eviscerated the business, and how young music lovers pay little or no attention to the radio or buying CDs any more.
In fact, hiring a guy like Rubin — who refuses to attend meetings or have an office at Sony’s Columbia Records despite now being co-chief executive, and who wears cargo pants and a T-shirt instead of a suit — should be evidence enough that executives in the industry are scared out of their wits. And it’s clear that one of the things Rubin wants to focus on is the music, which would be a refreshing change.
As media mogul David Geffen puts it in the story:
“The music business, as a whole, has lost its faith in content… only 10 years ago, companies wanted to make records, presumably good records, and see if they sold. But panic has set in, and now it’s no longer about making music, it’s all about how to sell music.”
A couple of the other prescriptions for success that Rubin throws out in the piece, however, raise some fairly major question marks, and the first of those is the idea that the online music business has to adopt a subscription model in order to have any hope of staying alive.
The only problem with that idea is that no one has had any real success with the subscription approach, despite repeated attempts. Services such as Rhapsody, the new Napster and Yahoo Radio are still around and have users, but they are hardly growing. The bulk of music listeners simply don’t seem to be interested in subscribing to a kind of virtual radio station online, although some continue to support the idea.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs — who knows a thing or two about music online — has repeatedly said that he has no interest in offering a subscription service. “Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. “The subscription model has failed so far.”
And Jobs is far from the only person who is skeptical of the subscription approach.
It’s true that part of the reason a subscription model hasn’t worked is that the record companies and other players — rights holders such as publishing companies and performance rights groups — haven’t been able to get their act together, and have spent most of their time coming up with new ways to screw people through DRM.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign that any of that is going to change anytime soon, with or without Rick Rubin.
May 3rd, 2007 | Media 2.0 | No Comments
It’s nice to think of the Internet as a place without borders — in other words, without all the walls and boundaries and checkpoints that we’re used to in the “real” world. Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it is, and the Pandora music-sharing site is only the latest example. The thing I find most surprising about Pandora isn’t that it is being forced to put its content in a box, it’s that the company has been able to remain unboxed for so long.
Content owners and rights-holders of all kinds use IP sniffing to block users from different countries (and of course countries like China use similar means to block foreign content that might unduly influence the local populace). As a Canadian, I’m well acquainted with this practice, since it is the same process that prevents me from watching episodes of Heroes on the NBC site if I forget to have my PVR record it, or blocks me from watching clips from Saturday Night Live and other shows. Why? Because Canadian broadcasters make their living by licensing those shows, and they don’t like to think about people watching them on the Interweb any old time they want.
As Tom Conrad of Pandora points out in the comments section of Mike Arrington’s post at TechCrunch, it’s not enough to do deals with groups like Canada’s SOCAN — which handles rights for composers and “publishers.” Sites that are considered to be Internet radio like Pandora have to sign deals with the record labels as well, and that is where the sticking point lies. As Mike Masnick notes at Techdirt, the record industry could teach advanced classes in how to shoot yourself in the foot.
And Mark is quite right that this isn’t the only fight that Pandora and Last.fm have on their plate: there’s also the ongoing battle over the new fees for streaming Internet radio, about which there is more info at the Broadcast Law blog (thanks to Lucas Gonze for the link). If you want to get involved somehow, check out the Save Internet Radio site.
Apr 26th, 2007 | Citizen Media, Media 2.0 | No Comments
Ethan Kaplan at blackrimglasses.com has written something approaching a manifesto for a new age of creativity driven by cheap and accessible technology — something he distinguishes from “user-generated content,” because I think he feels that’s a marketing buzzword used primarily by big corporations, in order to try and co-opt people’s desire to contribute. As he puts it:
“The whole concept behind “User Generated Content” as a means of describing content created by and for the People is flawed in that it simultaneously is presupposing a hierarchal difference — subjugating the “User” as a different class — [and] maintaining this hierarchy by virtue of a disingenuous altruistic elevation of said content to that of Corporate under the guise of Marketing.”
Can you tell that Ethan (the director of technology at Warner Brothers Records) has a degree in fine art and cultural theory? I thought you probably could. But he is right, in the sense that things like the Modest Mouse video contest are an attempt to give fans the illusion that they are actually interacting with the band when they are doing anything but. Ethan goes on to say:
“Here’s the thing: the best of what we now call UGC, and I choose to call GOOD FILM/VIDEO came from subversive desire and goals, as well as the desire for uninhibited creative expression outside of the confines of economics and hierarchy which define the media industry.”
“Take back the media! Do not partake in systems meant to enforce hierarchy, and instead embrace those that seek to diminish and eliminate it.”
A call to arms indeed. Creative artists of the world, unite! Take up the cellphone and the video camera — you have nothing to lose but your media chains.
Apr 20th, 2007 | Media 2.0 | No Comments
Another day in the media industry, another half a dozen or so indicators that upheaval is the name of the game — whether you’re in the music business, the TV business or (yes) the newspaper business. Here’s a few links of interest in case you’re trying to follow along with this little game of Snakes & Ladders at home:
- Some of the local TV stations attending the National Association of Broadcasters convention this week said that they are more than a little nervous about what is happening with online video, as NBC and CBS are doing deals with Joost and everyone else under the sun (other than YouTube), or starting their own online video channels. Where does that leave the affiliate in Topeka, Kansas? Good question.
- The major record labels have been hoping that downloads of digital music through iTunes and elsewhere might help reverse the slide in sales the industry has been fighting for some time, but a new survey throws some cold water on that idea. Enders Analysis says it expects sales to keep falling.
- Associated Press has launched a new blog aimed at giving younger audiences the news in a fresh format. It’s called Far and Wide and describes itself as “a fresh way into the news, one that puts you squarely in the places where news is happening, and in the newsrooms where reporters’ stories go out to the world”. It will also give readers a look behind the scenes at the lives of some of AP’s reporters. (hat tip to journalism.co.uk for the link)
- The Chicago Tribune is launching a “hyperlocal” website that it is hoping readers and residents will be willing to not only read but help contribute to. The newspaper says that it is looking for “citizen contributors” to write blogs and submit news stories for its new site, Triblocal.com, and that the best pieces will be selected and printed in a publication that will be inserted into the regular Tribune newspaper. On an unrelated note, Tribune Co. — which is being taken private by real-estate gazillionaire Sam Zell — posted a loss and sharply lower revenues for the first quarter.
