Wednesday, February 7, 2007

More Power To You

TIME magazine decided to do something different when they declared their person of the year of 2006. The chosen person can be an author and an astronaut, a drug addict and a doctor, a president and a prepubescent child; this person of the year for 2006 is an ambiguous “you”, and they all have one thing in common. They all use the internet, which is something that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and influential to American popular culture and media.

In fact, I think that this same “you” they speak of is also the musical artist of the year. Social networking sites like MySpace and the do-it-yourself video sharing site YouTube are increasingly becoming a more popular method of finding new music. All of the sudden anybody could become a music star; anyone with a camera or simple recording devices can suddenly broadcast their music on the internet for literally anyone to access. For example, this unknown artist topped YouTube charts today singing Beyonce.

And while their fame may not even make it fifteen seconds (let alone fifteen minutes), some artists have exploited these new online media sources, using them as a main promotional tool and actually creating hits through these online venues.

Take the band OK Go for example. Their “Here It Goes Again” video topped the charts on YouTube, and consequently sky-rocketed their record sales. The video features a dance routine on treadmills (see below), and is creative and unique but is also grainy and extremely low budget. And it was promoted simply through online word-of-fingertips.

Other artists have used MySpace to promote their album. Listeners can stream and sometimes download MP3 versions of the artists’ top songs, which is obviously a plus with our recent cultural try-before-you-buy mentality. Examples include Lily Allen, who released her album in the UK and then moved on to promote herself over MySpace until she gained enough publicity for a domestic release (and radio airplay) this last week.

But additionally by building online “friendships,” creating blogs, and posting bullitens, Myspace artists can connect with their fans in a more intimate manner—while a band would never have the opportunity to send all of their fans snail mail, with just a quick MySpace bulletin and suddenly all their “friends” are contacted. Through the internet, anyone can create a sense of belonging to their generation and American culture as a whole.

Radio and television used to be enough of a universal connection, with families getting together around the radio or TV to listen to or watch programs together. This enabled people nationwide to unite culturally through music and television shows— a ClearChannel-doting tween in the Midwest could be humming along to the same early 90s jam as a soccer mom in the south. With limited accessibility to only particular shows or stations, every one across the nation was able to share this mentality in a way that would have been unprecedented before mass media growth. But with the expansion of the Internet in the 90s and today’s increased connectability and diversity of media outlets, we are bored by the same stations and the same shows that are broadcast on traditional media. The internet really has given more power to the American “you”.

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