In a previous post, I talked about lip-sync star Keenan Cahill and questioned attitudes to copyright and how these are changing in our online world.
It seems Keenan has hit the big-time! over 30 million views on his YouTube channel and now he is starring alongside one of the biggest artists in the world right now - 50 Cent. But Keenan isn't starring in 50 cent's video - 50 Cent is in Keenan's video!!!
So it begs the question. What does talent mean? Is your talent judged by the size of your audience - think Susan Boyle... How does someone with Keenan's 'talent' get 50 Cent (whose agents and marketing team spend undoubtedly a fortune on creating the perfect look) to come and perform alongside him - using only an iPod and a webcam in the teenager's bedroom - not props, no staging, very little choreography if any...
Where does this leave us as an audience?! Where does it leave the music industry? Do we still know how to recognise 'talent' or do we now appreciate fame over talent (ie. Paris Hilton)
Isn't there a difference between talent and entertainment? And where are the lines?
ReplyDelete50 cent is barely "one of the biggest artists" pretty sure he's expired. And 30 million views in all ur videos is nothing compared to other channels with better content in them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. The question about the difference between talent and entertainment is exactly the question I am asking you to challenge and debate - so what do you think?
ReplyDeleteMichael, I think you are missing the point somewhat - 30 million is still a massive audience when you consider that is 10 times the size of New Zealand's population. What we are asking you to challenge or critique here is the power of that audience. If you disagree that 30 million is a large audience I would be expecting you to back this up with an explanation as to why an audience of 30 million is no longer considered powerful or important etc.
The idea of this post is to start a conversation to which you are able to critique and debate - to help you prepare for the Media Scholarship exam - where you will need to support everything you say with concrete evidence and a strong argument.
I find the question "where does it leave the music industry?" the most intriguing.
ReplyDeleteWe all know that the way the music industry works is entirely up in the air at the moment with the growing attitude from consumers that music is a commodity, and the growing behavioural trend towards music being free whether artists & labels like it or not. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails/How To Destroy Angels been a passionate advocate for embracing this changing industry, and articulated some of his ideas here.
It's things like this that make me wonder whether there's a future for a discrete music industry at all, or whether it needs to grow up into a broader "entertainment industry." There's definite resentment from independent and alternative artists at the amount of attention received by videos such as this, which while having great execution, are completely devoid of original musical content. You could argue that the 50 Cent track laden with flavour-of-the-month autotuned lyrics about partying with fiiiine shaw-tays could have come straight off Interscope's A&R department photocopier.
I'll write a full blog post discussing this shift from top-down to bottom-up-and-sideways in the music biz in a bit more detail, but for now I'll leave you with some links that I think are grasping it really well.
OK Go realised that music sales are not the viable revenue stream they once were, so made their record and videos cheaply but creatively.
There's been a viral campaign called iamamiwhoami running on YouTube for 9 months with still no announcement of what the project is. It's obviously got some resources behind it when you look at the production values, but it's gathered a community of repeat visits (is ongoing fan-recruitment better than 30 million individual hits?) who will definitely buy albums/merchandise/concert tickets/other once the project reaches maturity.
By the eay, thankyou for making this blog. It has been the main resource i looked up for my study for the scholarship exam. I'm sure im not the only one that got something out of the resources provided. -Michael :]
ReplyDeleteHope you went well in the exam!
ReplyDeleteKeenan may have gotten 50 cent in his video because he was famous, but he got famous because of his showmanship. If he had just stood there mouthing the words to a song boringly, he would have 3 hits on his video. Him, His Mum, His Dad. It is the showmanship when he lip-syncs to the songs that people watch for, which is what made him famous. The Internet hasn't made us value fame over talent, it has made us aware of more talents and make those who have them famous in non-traditional ways. We are only looking to be entertained, and when we watch 50 cent's videos we are watching something filled with fakeness. The entire video was crafted by 50 cent's people to look good and show off. When we watch amateur videos on YouTube, we are entertained by a real person doing real things, rather than having done a little bit of something and editing the rest. This makes the video entertaining, if it is good.
ReplyDelete