Forget Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Willow Smith, there’s only one tween star you need to know about right now. The story of 13 year-old Californian Rebecca Black is a uniquely modern one. Black posted her song and video Friday on Youtube in February and within weeks it has surpassed 60 million views.
Rebecca Black may now be an internet star but what’s notable is that most of the chatter online about the song Friday is concerned about how bad it is. It’s been called “the worst pop song of all time” and it’s not hard to see why. In contrast, Simon Cowell (perhaps with dollar signs in his eyes) has called the song “genius”.
Black’s song Friday is an inane and catchy ode to weekend teenage partying. Drenched in Auto-Tune, it contains a number of nonsensical lyrics concerned with eating cereal, trying to decide which seat to take in the car and checking the order of the days of the week: “tomorrow is Saturday / and Sunday comes afterwards”.
As well as racking up Youtube plays, iTunes sales, trending on Twitter (above Japan and Charlie Sheen), Black has appeared on Good Morning America, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and has received encouragement from Lady Gaga and Chris Brown.
The Rebecca Black phenomenon is fascinating from a pop culture and social media perspective but the real story of the song’s success lies with Ark Music Factory, a vanity label based in Los Angeles run by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson. Ark Music Factory specialise in producing music and entertainment for the tween and teenager market. It is Jey and Wilson who are responsible for writing Friday for the 13 year-old..
Ark works by charging parents of hopeful tween stars a fee for the production of a song and music video. Black’s parents paid Ark $2,000 for the Friday multimedia package after Black attended an Ark casting call and was invited to record the song.
After a quick look at Ark Music Factory’s output, it becomes obvious it’s all as cringe-inducing as Friday. There are dozens of formulaic tween pop songs with slick super-saturated videos from young hopefuls with names like CJ Fam, Alana Lee, Danika and Kaya. All of the songs have the same faux Europop synthesized backing track and vocals Auto-Tuned beyond human recognition.
Ark Music Factory’s musical output seems made by a person whose entire musical knowledge is a Ke$ha studio outtake and therein lies the problem. While Rebecca Black can be held up as a prime example of the democratisation of pop culture thanks to social media, that doesn’t mean it’s worthy of attention. It’s the bad art aspect of Friday that has garnered it viral status, while helping a happy-go-lucky 13 year-old to her deserved 15 minutes of fame. “The concept we feel seems to have crossed a lot of boundaries, for the better or worse, ” admitted Ark’s Clarence Jey rather tellingly.
Google has been making a lot of noise lately about how Youtube can make as much money for artists and labels as they can by selling their music. The idea is simple enough and has been working for big artists like Lady Gaga who make a small amount of revenue for each ad-supported video play. But when that number stacks up to over a billion views, that’s a lot of moolah. Labels which are using the ad-supported model, have seen a 200-300% increase in revenue in the last year, which Google are putting down to more viewers watching on mobile phones, more profitable ad formats along with online curators that use blogs and social networks to share their tastes.
“If you were to look at the numbers for Lady Gaga, the number of views she gets on YouTube versus downloads that she gets on iTunes, obviously, a single download on iTunes will pay her more than a single view on YouTube,” said Phil Farhi, a product manager from Google’s YouTube monetization team. “But when you look at the traffic — the number of people that are coming back and watching her videos over and over again, watching her videos before they download the song, or discovering them on YouTube — you can see how that scale can compete with a paid service.” Continue Reading..»
Youtube, a site that probably everybody who reads this column uses every day has launched a number of new features lately. First up, in recognition that music videos account for 57 percent of most-watch virals on Youtube, Google has introduced a music section to the site at youtube.com/music. It shows the most popular videos of the day as well as a breakdown by genre and curated-playlists. They are also promising a local music listing section in the near future. The addition follows the introduction of full-length movies (youtube.com/movies) where you can watch Animal Farm along with films featuring Jackie Chan, Demi Moore and a slew of Bollywood titles.
If the thought of clicking your mouse is too much to bear then Youtube have thought of that too. Leanback (youtube.com/leanback) is the site’s equivalent of a 24 hour TV channel. It takes videos from subscriptions and serves up non-stop programming based on your preferences.
Also in Youtubeland, the long overdue restriction on uploading videos longer than 10 minutes has been changed to 15. As a celebration and befitting of that ubiquitous Andy Warhol quote and the site’s regular carousel of viral celebrities, they asked users to make a video of their “15 minutes of fame” , which will be showcased on the homepage.
Meanwhile, in Kanyewatch, last week was a veritable feast of Jeezy info as Kanye did two things of interest. First, he made an appearance at the HQs of both Facebook and Twitter, looking dapper in a designer suit and gave acappella performances of new songs Lost in the World, Chain Gang and Mama’s Boyfriend from his forthcoming album. You can watch those videos here.
Secondly, he joined Twitter (@kanyewest)! Oh what delights! It sounds like a small thing but in truth, it’s fascinating reading and confirms the many facets of his personality. He confirmed he’s changed the title of his new album from Good Ass Job to.. something else (clever Kanye), he posted pics of his jet plane and his new massive living room projector screen (rich-ass Kanye), offered business advice (The Apprentice Kanye), ribbed himself for his passion for ancient art (humble Kanye), called himself “The King” a lot (modest Kanye), expressed frustration with being able to get what he wants “What do I have to do to get a simple persian rug with cherub imagery?” (tantrum Kanye) and misspelled Silicon Valley as “Silicone Valley” in his first tweet (nervous Kanye).
Let’s face it. Kanye West is a passionate guy and it’s only a matter of time before something happens to rival his caps lock-fueled “I’m typing so f**king hard I might break my f**king Mac book Air!!!!!!!!” blog rant of times gone by. When it does, with the ease of Twitter, it’ll also be fascinating reading.
