An anthropological introduction to YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI won’t say every minute of this video is riveting, but I will say it’s more enjoyable than the evanescent Top Ten.\u00c2\u00a0 All we hear from the fat cats is no stars ever broke online, but Michael Wesch says otherwise, that the Soulja Boy phenomenon was built on YouTube.\u00c2\u00a0 And more acts will gain traction online.\u00c2\u00a0 But the reason you’ve got to watch this video is the dissection of the YouTube community, its exploration OF WHAT IS HAPPENING ONLINE!<\/p>\n
Rather than passively waiting to eat what is shoveled to them by the old guard, today people create their own content.\u00c2\u00a0 Spreading the word regarding its quality by themselves, employing no marketing, no advertising.\u00c2\u00a0 And what creates a YouTube sensation is authenticity.\u00c2\u00a0 Every commercial online video endeavor has flopped.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out we don’t want Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz to create bite-sized TV shows for our online consumption, but people just like us to display raw creativity, to tickle our fancy through their humanity.<\/p>\n
The reason why there’s no allegiance to today’s new acts, why they don’t have careers, is they’re lacking this key element.\u00c2\u00a0 They might be singing some vapid song created by Kara DioGuardi or Diane Warren that flows through the commercial sieve, but the audience knows this is pulp, that it’s got no weight, that the act is just a vessel for hacks to make money.\u00c2\u00a0 Therefore, they reject the act’s further endeavors.<\/p>\n
People love the Hold Steady because they believe they’re authentic.<\/p>\n
Fans were pissed at Wilco for taking VW’s money because it crossed with their belief in who Jeff Tweedy and his band truly were.\u00c2\u00a0 If Jeff needed the money THAT badly, THEY would have given it to him.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like a blogger puts a tip jar on his page to raise funds to go to the political convention, an act could beg for money from its fans AND THEY’D DELIVER IT!\u00c2\u00a0 Because they want to believe THEY OWN THE ACT, not the commercial concerns who abuse them on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
Maybe synching a song to some TV show is not abhorred by your miniscule fanbase, they want to see you make it, and you’re not really endorsing anything (and probably not getting any real traction either, since this paradigm has been overdone).\u00c2\u00a0 But when you associate your music, your image with a COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE as opposed to art, you’re done.\u00c2\u00a0 Your career is frozen in time from the moment you make this deal.<\/p>\n
Look at the Stones…\u00c2\u00a0 Has anybody cared about their new music since "Start Me Up"?\u00c2\u00a0 The tour for "Tattoo You" was sponsored by Jovan, now the public knew the Stones were only about the money.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to enjoy the new tunes when it’s no longer a band doing drugs, searching for greatness, but a corporation as big and bad as any in the Fortune 500.\u00c2\u00a0 Artists are supposed to be PURE!<\/p>\n
Don’t talk to me about athletes…\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not brain related.\u00c2\u00a0 Who an athlete is has very little to do with his performance on the field.\u00c2\u00a0 They work for the man usually, and they’ve got to perform their best or be demoted.\u00c2\u00a0 Alex Rodriguez doesn’t stand for anything.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, what made Muhammad Ali a legend was NOT fighting, standing up for WHAT HE BELIEVED IN!<\/p>\n
Michael Phelps sacrificed in the pool, but we’re not interested in his political beliefs, whereas we want to know everything about our artists, what made them who they are, how they came to this conclusion.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to BELIEVE in our artists!\u00c2\u00a0 Plaster them with logos and we no longer trust their utterances.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas no one believes a race car driver performs worse because his car is stickered with logos.<\/p>\n
Like Michael Wesch says, in a land full of rampant commercialization, we’re searching for authenticity.\u00c2\u00a0 You can make some quick money via commercialization, but if you want to have a lasting career, you’ve got to have principles, you can’t sell your audience out, you’ve got to draw people in!<\/p>\n
They’ve got to believe your music is uncompromised, that you’re beholden to only one master, yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 That you took the road less traveled and you triumphed.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans don’t want to know you whored yourself out for the money.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what THEY had to do.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re supposed to be BETTER than they are!<\/p>\n
So, U2 can still tour and sell records.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they made a deal with Apple, but Apple is an exception, Steve Jobs is the definitive rock star.<\/p>\n
Dave Matthews Band isn’t whored out, and they’re near the top of the gross list, year after year.<\/p>\n
But all those other post MTV bands?\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, they’ve fallen by the wayside.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t build new superstars, because the audience doesn’t trust who we’re purveying.\u00c2\u00a0 They can see the men behind the curtain, pulling the strings.\u00c2\u00a0 They see the choices based on money instead of career.\u00c2\u00a0 People might like a song, but they don’t believe in the act.<\/p>\n
Future stars will build slowly.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll say no more than yes.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ll make money for decades.\u00c2\u00a0 While today’s fat cats are living in beach communities spending that CD\/video cash.\u00c2\u00a0 MTV is not about music.\u00c2\u00a0 The CD is dying.\u00c2\u00a0 The old guard wishes it had control over the future, but it doesn’t spend enough time in the pit with the audience to see what people really believe.\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s exec has CONTEMPT for the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to survive in the creative fields, watch this video.\u00c2\u00a0 It will pay more dividends than reading trade publications or listening to demos or listening to Top Forty radio or…<\/p>\n
Yes, this YouTube video is a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Michael Wesch’s effort from the beginning of last year has had 6,349,080 YouTube views!\u00c2\u00a0 And he’s an ANTHROPOLOGY PROFESSOR!\u00c2\u00a0 But the community has embraced him.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’re not embracing your act.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s the problem.<\/p>\n
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If I hear one more time that commercials are the new radio, that no one cares about endorsements and sponsorships, I’m going to take my vinyl records and move to Tierra del Fuego. Ain’t that a laugh.\u00c2\u00a0 Vinyl records.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though I’m a big believer in vinyl, that it sounds better than CDs, it’s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-online"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-ly","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}