YouTube works
Written by Verne on November 12th, 2007I know, quite a revelation. </sarcasm>
Brought to light by a close friend today, I’ve spent the last 30 minutes or so watching each of the videos from Marie Digby’s YouTube channel. I have no intention to add another post to the blogosphere that testifies to the power of the social media landscape, but I’m a sucker for acoustic music covers so I thought it warranted a mention. The videos not only portray Marie as a talented and beautiful musician, but also captivates me with the fact that you get to see a side of her that you rarely get to see in other “celebrities” - the human one. And I think this is really where musicians (and artists in any other shape or form) are benefiting most from mediums like YouTube.
People these days are more skeptical than ever about everything they consume - music included. But I think that making effective use of social media tools (whether it be Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube, in this case) helps to reassure us that these are real people and not just some staged and over-produced group of pretty faces (if Britney did an a capella YouTube video, she’d surely regain some positive PR). John Mayer’s blog does it, Bathroom Sessions does it, and Marie Digby’s YouTube channel does it (if you don’t believe me, check out her Halloween post).
Where it loses a bit of its magic is when we find out that it’s all part of an elaborate scheme derived by a marketing team’s attempt to leverage the phenomenon described above. But by then you’ve already gone out and bought the Marie Digby CD, told all your friends about it, and wrote about it on your blog.
So there you have it, another post that testifies to the power of YouTube and the social media landscape. (Oops.)
Now go and indulge in the goodness that is Marie Digby’s cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. Ela. Ela. Eh. Eh. Eh.
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This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 1:16 am and is filed under strategy... or lack thereof. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
john
November 13th, 2007 at 9:36 pmI too took some time to look around her YouTube site. One thing that I failed to correct was that her name is actually Marié. If you saw her video blog, she just becomes that much more… :)
Garry
November 14th, 2007 at 2:09 amAmazing. She has the voice of an angel. She’s also a pretty good writer. I was listening to ‘Girlfriend’ and the lyrics were pretty meaningful.
Hopefully she’s going to have records coming out soon. I’ll definitely be one of the first in line.
Eric
November 15th, 2007 at 8:45 amI still “go out and buy” (aka download) her cd even after finding out her youtube thing was a marketing scheme.
But you’re right in that it shows they are real people and that she has real talent. I wouldn’t go so far to say if Britney did an acapella she would regain positive PR… for all we know she would suck and it would just reinforce my belief that she sucks.
Garry
November 18th, 2007 at 1:45 amryc - Sometimes you have to know where you place. It was actually a metaphor to something I realized that night. We’ll talk when we get together.
Verne
November 22nd, 2007 at 4:40 pmEric - you’re right, the prerequisite to making these videos in hopes of getting positive PR is that you’re actually GOOD at singing. haha.
Garry - you’ve stumped us all. You’ll have to clue us in later. :)