Hoover, one the authors of The New Rockstar Philosophy, published a post about the group emphasizing how they positioned themselves on YouTube to draw millions of views by doing covers they knew the masses were searching for.
Boyce Avenue:
1. Published no less than 48 covers on YouTube by artists such as Taylor Swift, Matchbox Twenty, The Killers and other chart toppers.
2. Titled each video as the original would be titled, making each title ‘search friendly’. For example, “Coldplay – Viva la Vida” not “Boyce Avenue – Viva la Vida (Cover)”. Needless to say, more people search for Coldplay than Boyce Avenue.
3. Included a mix of covers and originals on their YouTube channel. Their cover of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida has garnered almost seven million views. Naturally, some of those viewers went on to check out the group’s original material too.
4. They presumably tracked their progress and booked a tour in the cities where their videos were most popular.
A fine continuation of and welcome addition to the stop-motion music video series on YouTube. Watch for the little man doing the Ted Striker “Staying Alive” disco strut.
Skittles have the right idea. When engaging their customers online, rather than developing an all-encompassing website, they simply grouped together their community assets (i.e. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.) into a single navigation menu and window interface. For instance, on Skittles.com, if you click on ‘Pics’, you go directly to Flickr. This approach inspired UnHub to create a service that will help you build your online presence by grouping your various network pages into a single URL. Simple, clean and brilliant. I created an example for We Are Listening.
Stop motion video editing is popular on YouTube. I first got sight of its viral potential when young Lasse Gjertsen uploaded his outrageous piano and drum montage:
More recently, Oren Lavie enjoyed tremendous success beyond his YouTube exposure with a beautifully conceived yet shoe-string budgeted piece:
Yesterday, I discovered a symphony of YouTube clips that, collectively, sound quite amazing and reflect the exciting prospects of remixing previously published and shared content:
It’s been more than a week now since I downloaded Officer Roseland’s album and I’m still waiting to receive my $1. I don’t want to be a jerk about this because I love the concept but, clearly, the band was unprepared for the overwhelming response. Their strategy was to pay users $1 if they downloaded the entire album for free. Fans had the option to donate their dollar to charity but it appears that the band’s target audience, myself included, is not as selfless as the band members anticipated. As such, Officer Roseland is facing a backlog of downloaders who submitted their PayPal addresses but have not yet received the one dollar contribution promised to them. I imagine that the group’s arrangement with the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation is more flexible than the opportunistic demographic the campaign was aimed at. I received a group email from the band this evening assuring me that the money is on its way… and that I can still change my mind and donate my one dollar, if I wish. I think I’ll stick to my guns on this one, not to be a jerk or anything, just to see what happens.
Here’s Officer Roseland’s response to the campaign:
Further to my piece on Don Ross earlier this week, I wanted to add another post about one of his fellow CandyRat Records artists who really caught my attention last night with his original composition, “Catching the Light”.
Dufour has lots of video performances on YouTube, equally as stylistically impressive and melodically driven. As one of Canada’s emerging young stars of acoustic fingerstyle guitar, he is building a strong fanbase and reputation as an awe-inspiring live performer and innovator of the solo acoustic guitar style driven by him and his CandyRat peers, many of whom are also prominent YouTube stars.
Anyone who has randomly surfed through YouTube has eventually landed on a video of a teen guitar virtuoso with millions of accrued views. Search a little further and a vast world of amateur instructional guitar ‘how-to’ clips will reveal themselves with tantamount popularity. Guitar is a massive interest category on YouTube and, with it, a traditionally unrepresented musical niche has emerged to the fore: Guitar Virtuosos. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Nuno Bettencourt, and alike, were popular long before YouTube unveiled itself as the premier video portal, however, a new breed of guitarists have caught the attention of the dotcom generation with unique styles that, until now, experienced only nook-and-cranny exposure.
Enter CandyRat Records, the most visible alternative acoustic guitar label on YouTube – or anywhere, for that matter. The boutique-sized label, founded by Rob Poland, has capitulated extraordinary guitarists through a series of low-budget video clips of their music, the most successful of which include some form of tapping, odd tuning, or any other unconventional manner of playing their instrument. Although CandyRat represents a whole slew of talented guitarists and singer/songwriters, the company’s most notorious roster of YouTube maestros includes the likes of Erik Mongrain, Antoine Dufour, and, of course, Andy McKee, who has garnered just under 20 million views for his video performance of “Drifting“, an original composition, and over 8 million views for an innovative version of “Africa” by Toto. And then there’s Don Ross.
Don Ross was Rob Poland’s first signing, even though Don remained contractually independent. In 2005, Don released an album through CandyRat which marked the label’s investiture as an acoustic aficionado. In a recent communication with Jill Katona of Paperwork Media, Don’s booking agent and Andy McKee’s former rep, I learned that it was Don who brought Andy to Poland’s attention, who later signed him and released two of his CDs under CandyRat. Old friends, Don Ross and Andy McKee collaborated for the label and enjoyed mutual exposure online. However, it was McKee’s video performance of “Drifting” that truly put CandyRat on the map and significant offshoot traffic in Don’s direction, as well as the other artists on the label’s growing roster.
Don Ross and Andy McKee’s styles are comparable. The two masters of their trade govern the art of percussive, finger-picking, neck-hammering guitar techniques which make their solo guitar compositions sound as if there are multiple instruments omnipresent. Considering Don Ross’ lengthy tenure as an acoustic guitar performer, I can only assume that he is one of the pioneers of this style – he has certainly become renowned for it.
Don is currently on tour with Brooke Miller, a 2007 finalist in We Are Listening’s Breaking the Band, and their aggregate talent should make for an excellent series of live show.
In September 2008, Billboard Magazine published a list titled, “The 100 Best Ways For Your Music To Get Attention” which caught my attention this month when I received the top 20 from Peter Spellman’s Music Biz Insight newsletter. Note the volume of high profile opportunities in the licensing branch of the music industry as opposed to the more traditional sales and ticketing divisions which would have dominated this list through the 90’s:
1. Placement in a television ad for Apple
2. Performance on Oprah (6.6 million viewership)
3. Placement in a television commercial that runs during a special event with significant viewership (97.5 million viewers for the 2008 Super Bowl, for instance)
4. Song Featured as iTunes “Free Single of the Week”
5. Song covered on American Idol (approx. 27 million viewers)
6. Placement in Activision’s “Guitar Hero” videogame (approx. 10 million unit sales)
7. Song placed during a hit movie’s opening credits
8. Placement in a heavy-rotation television commercial for Nike
9. Performance on Lollapalooza Main Stage
10. Placement in MTV’s “Rock Band” videogame (US sales total 3.4 million units to date)
11. Video on YouTube’s Most-Viewed Videos page for music (approx. 75 million unique visitors)
12. Cover editorial in Rolling Stone
13. Placement in Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto” (4.7 million unit sales and growing)
14. Placement on HBO’s “Entourage”
15. Video on the YouTube’s home page
16. Placement in ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy”
17. Any single or video listed in the “Free on iTunes” section
18. Single played on Radio Disney (approx. 36.5 million listeners per week)
Google’s VP of Content Partnership, David Eun, said that YouTube “is not screwing the labels, and, if anything, needs to partner more closely with them”, in response to Warner Music Group’s demand that YouTube remove every video from WMG’s catalogue.
Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion in an all-stock transaction. It has since been working closely with record labels and independent rights owners on a number of mechanical royalty models for balanced and mutual content monetization, at which point, it struck a ‘blanket license’ deal with Warner. However, Warner has not been able to re-negoatiate terms with Google who, resultantly, had to remove videos under WMG’s authorship or which contain copyright associated with WMG’s publishing. As this amounts to a great many clips which are now ‘unplayable’, YouTube, the world’s largest video portal, can no longer claim to provide “infinite choice”, at least under the music category which will no longer include Madonna, REM and Eric Clapton, to name a few. Quite a blow.
The feud has snowballed and YouTube users are documenting their frustration on the video portal. Here’s one version I enjoyed watching:
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