Harris David's Open Salon Blog

Is Greyson Chance's serendipitous Youtube rise a ruse?

Tue, 25 May 2010 02:05:03 -0400

His meteoric ascent to millions of Youtube views and maximum-exposure media tour have some questioning whether there's a Major Media hand behind sixth grader Greyson Michael Possibility. Greyson Chance, the latest on the web singing phenomenon, has parlayed his Lady Gaga interpretation into the type of instant celebrity that would make advertising and marketing professionals swoon. From a 12-year-old singing at a local choir festival to performing on Ellen Degeneres’s TV hour and getting profiled by Diane Sawyer all in one week is pretty heady stuff for anyone, let alone a sixth grader at Cheyenne Middle School in Edmond, Oklahoma. Within the past two weeks, this aspiring young singer/songwriter has seen the rise of the Facebook page, a Youtube channel, and countless fan pages all joining to maximize his exposure.

All of which tell a story about how rapidly points are changing on the net, claims Miles Beckett, CEO of social entertainment corporation EQAL. Just a few years ago, he claims, “you would go towards the web page that fit what you were executing and get well-liked there and that was it. Now,” he points out, “there are all these places to go at after – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube … and more, and you are able to leverage your information all more than at when.”

Another big adjust, he adds, is the sheer volume and good quality of content material flooding on the internet. Flash celebrity is some thing he knows a bit about – Mr. Beckett became an on the net celebrity back in 2006 when he and his partner developed the seminal "lonelygirl15," a hit on-line video journal that became a media sensation when fans discovered "Bree," the diarist, was a fictional creation and not an actual pining teen.

“Back then, there just wasn’t that significantly content worth watching,” he says, “now it takes a lot additional to stand out.”

The young Mr. Likelihood appears to have all the necessary components to stand out in what has turn out to be a extremely busy marketplace, affirms music industry analyst Jeff Snyder, who runs the Music Company Program at Lebanon Valley College.

He has high-quality camera work, higher profile, catchy material, and an integrated advertising and marketing plan perfect out with the gate. The approach is so sophisticated, the truth is, Snyder says, that it suggests the possibility of the stealth professional campaign. Wherever are the other families attending the choir festival event?” he asks, and “who filmed the performance in such a way as to focus about the adoring 13-year-old girls, all in perfect focus?”.

It can be challenging to believe an unknown elementary school student could do so considerably on his own. “Someone in that corner understands what they are performing,” Snyder claims. The boy’s success points to a deeper trend. “Never just before have so quite a few individuals had the opportunity to attain Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame without major labels or media organizations. Just a FlipVideo, YouTube account, and a song” he states. The numbers are surprisingly tipped in favor of those who comprehend this.

According to Web analytics site TubeMogul, only 33 % of videos on Youtube are already viewed above one million times. Fifty-three percent have fewer than 500 views.

This means that approximately 46 percent of all videos on YouTube are already watched around 500 occasions.

“So in theory at least, “ Snyder adds, “there is in fact a 40-plus percent opportunity that a video uploaded to YouTube is going to be watched in excess of 500 times.”

As these young on the internet phenoms accumulate – believe Justin Bieber as well as the 23-year-old Taiwanese singer, Lin Yu-chun, who recently wowed on the web international audiences with his interpretation of the Whitney Houston ballad – the entire entertainment landscape is staying flipped around, pronounces Fordham University professor and author of "New New Media," Paul Levinson. “Literally anyone can try their hand for the Internet,” he adds. Additional and far more, he claims, the music market as we know it is going to be less about talent discovery and additional about distribution.

”It is,” he claims, “the most revolutionary adjust in history.”

If such a professional-quality, coordinated PR campaign raises the specter of yet a different on the internet ruse, Beckett himself says that’s yet another fallout of where the on-line environment has come in a couple of short years.

“If Greyson Likelihood has a stealth campaign getting professionally run, it’s really tough to come across that out now,” he states. “Everyone knows what to do to make
it appear real.”

The Christian Science Monitor

Lady Gaga fires entire security team

Tue, 25 May 2010 02:05:35 -0400

The whole security team on Lady Gaga's planet tour were given the sack by the star after a recent gig.

According to the Sun, the singer lost her temper immediately after her security team failed to stop a fan at a concert in Japan making it onto the stage.

A source told the news provider: "She went potty. She couldn't believe they could let these things happen so she fired them for the spot. She goes out of her way to make her shows best and expects the exact same from her individuals.

"Some thought she would calm down but she put them straight on a plane house

In addition, it is claimed she fired her wardrobe assistant immediately after she forgot to lock her dressing room door.

In other Gaga news, it may be reported that Greyson Chance, an American schoolboy who shot to fame soon after a clip of him covering a Lady Gaga song was posted on YouTube, has been offered a record deal - possibly for the very same label as the singer.

Lady Gaga starts the UK leg of her planet tour on May 27th at the Trent FM arena in Nottingham.

Viagogo

Greyson Chance Predicted to Replace Justin Bieber?

Tue, 25 May 2010 01:05:08 -0400

Greyson Michael Opportunity, or Kid Gaga for short, is often a 12-year old Justin Bieber look-alike (well, not really…just the hair I guess) who may be the new youtube sensation around the world, garnering 18 million + hits as of nowadays, has nabbed a record contract with Interscope Records.

He was just a nobody last week. But following that jaw-dropping school performance of his, it looks like Justin Bieber would have to move aside to give way to this new pop icon in music television. Even Lady Gaga loves the awesome talent of this kid! It's said that he will have a spot in her new album and vice-versa! As it turns out, Lady Gaga is Greyson’s number #1 idol. According to him, he just loves Lady Gaga’s individuality and how she was capable to harness that with her musical gifts.

Would you believe that Greyson, with that angelic voice of his, did not have any formal voice training? He sings from the heart and has a great feel for music. Oh, and he writes his own songs too, like “Stars” and Broken Hearts”. Pretty awesome, huh? He did, nevertheless, have 3 years of piano lessons. But still…

So make way for the new Justin Bieber, folks! Greyson Opportunity a.k.a. Child Gaga is signing on!

Zacquisha

Greyson Chance and the Star-Maker Machinery: Pause

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:05:20 -0400

With Crazed Hits' captain, Alex Wilhelm, now as well busy or as well shy to reveal the untold bounty of pushing new pop music acts on-line it really is time for a pause.

A time to play some Joni Mitchell. And to reflect.

When Joni felt herself "a cog in something turning", she was, naturally, singing about a much more cosmic condition than that on the record biz. Not to reprise, then, may asylum be identified inside melodies and truths of Court and Spark.

Technology has, obviously, advanced plenty because the 1970s. Just as plainly, the blueprint for pop music marketing has not.

"It's an insane business," Mitchell told Rolling Stone magazine in 2002. "Now, this is all calculated music. It really is calculated for sales, it is sonically calculated, it is rudely calculated."

A top assembly-line schematic for today's mainstream record sector, offered in, both, domestic, and import, models, is the "viral" or "web" sensation that converts into a pop-star.

An early template was 25-year-old Scottish-born singer Sandi Thom who rolled out in the manufacturer's showroom in Spring 2006. Thom's team crafted a number one UK chart-hit while using song "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)" - their campaign propelled by reports of Thom's enormous "viral" success generated by performances webcast from her flat in Tooting, South London.

(This mythic web page was described memorably by then-manager Ian Brown as a "piss-stained basement". Thom's reputation went inside the tank after the ruse was exposed, but the canny Brown, one-time former pig-farmer from Devon who knows the secret to getting airplay, has since floated an additional charting money-spinner, The Priests. This musical combo, consisting of three Roman Catholic priests from Northern Ireland, scaled Euro pop charts in 2008 and 2009, even grabbing a Guinness Globe Record for 'Fastest-selling UK debut for a classical act'.)

European newspapers, radio, and television - common media outlets including the BBC and other, generally credible, news agencies - repeated as fact the trumped-up legend from the Tooting webcasts, and built the framework of a Cinderella story ~ Thom's discovery by the RCA Label Group (Sony) and requisite "record deal". The PR vehicle back-fired messily when the nature and extent of various, much-hyped, claims of a "viral" organism were exposed as misleading and/or false.

Blogs, led by Prince Campbell's then-active chartreuse internet site, uncovered significantly on the truth from the Sandi Thom case. My own series of posts on the topic can be found @:

Just Like Tom Thumb's News (08/04/06)

The Not-so-Basement Tapes: Open the Door, Homer (09/04/06)

Sandi Thom tops U2. Take That. (12/04/06)

Ian Brown Scores Hat Trick with Sandi Thom (13/04/06)

MySpace Flames Out + (15/04/06)

Postscript: Spinning a silk purse out of your sow's ear (23/06/06)

In 2010, the web hosts a twilight globe of "gossip blogs" and pseudo-news sites. Standard news outlets come across themselves on shaky ground as their audiences and ad revenues shrink. It really is a synergy that's formed an ideal tool for the report and entertainment market machine.

Posting to the Velvet Rope (music biz) discussion forum this week, one industry veteran noted: "With the ubiquity on the celebrity/gossip blog culture we are living in its having much easier and easier to dupe the public if you have the connections and money."

MOG

Games of Chance and summer’s bright, empty void

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:05:52 -0400

1. Flame Wars: What Are They Very good For? This week, small Grayson Chance was signed by Madonna’s manager, Guy Oseary, and with Interscope Records, after a whirlwind of publicity that began when he sang Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi at his church talent present, then appeared on Ellen, where the diabolically talented singer and instant icon herself called and praised him.

I 1st saw the Bieber-ish Grade 6 child on YouTube, exactly where the virus started, naturally, and loved the clip: He is adorable, and brilliant. Just 10 years ago or so, we may certainly not have witnessed him; YouTube, in distinct, is, increasingly, an unparalleled talent scout with complex taste and I love that each day I get to see not simply stars like Chace, but RiaSaind, the sexy, middle-aged transgendered prostitute whose “Excuse my beauty!” monologue Tennessee Williams ought to have devised, paranormally.

The difficulty with YouTube, on the other hand, is its subscribers and their raging flame wars (a new-ish critical term for that furious riots that break out on-line in between haters and haters of haters, more or less). Underneath the video of the kid Gaga referred to as “so sweet and so talented” is really a vicious debate about just how gay he is, how unlike the brilliant Bieber, and how gay Bieber is, among sporadic assault and battery threats between, one imagines, sour-faced, middle-aged receptionists and shut-ins wearing drapery as togas.

Anonymity obviously makes all on the internet posters brave, plus the Net itself, designed to unite us, is isolating and as a result wrenching us apart. The brave porn addicts who pushed the Web forward (as with all imaging technology) may must save us by creating webcams mandatory – God knows they must be tired of getting spoofed by sex-liars. (“I am completely not a rancid old man sitting in the nest of tobacco, burrito wrappers and bottles of cooking sherry!”)

2. Summer. You aren't only the kind of bright light that bar owners use to terrorize their drunken hangers-on at three a.m.; you also take away my exhibits, carelessly replacing them with reruns that have run already and, this can be some consolation, Hell’s Kitchen (Spoiler: Ramsay will call one contestant a “Stupid donkey!” whilst reaming him out inside a locked freezer) and Major Brother, or the American Dream (leisure, reward, repeat) as enacted by post-Lobotomy hardbodies. Summer!

In addition to the mournful phenomenon that is certainly the summer hiatus will be the network axe: ABC, NBC and CBS have put a number of exhibits on waivers, or cancelled them outright. On the bubble? The New Adventures of Old Christine, Gary Unmarried and Accidentally On Purpose, among other no-brainers like Melrose Place and Cold Situation. Brief discussion: AOP reeked of flop sweat from Day One: Dangle, then drop the baby. TNAOOC and GU: Jay Mohr is really funny, but not here, and both exhibits feature what is now all-too-common even to excellent sitcoms: a humourless, wired and unattractive wife/female lead with a sexually ambiguous male teen son.

Sexual ambiguity is cool if that’s the plan (as with Glee or even the lamentably cancelled Ugly Betty). Not so very much when the nervous, unattractive young actors are being propped up as some brutal inevitability, thanks to their dried-up, hectoring shrew of the mother. Even Medium, which I liked for so extended, has soured because of Alison-the-psychic’s relentlessly dour personality and obvious discomfort with her colossal weight gain. Going back to RiaSaind: stocky girlfriend sashays around within the Arizona heat in skin-tight jean shorts and also a tied-off T-shirt and truly apologizes for using her looks. Alison, also an Arizona native, hides, instead, in inexpensive, loose suits and babyish smocks.

Where by did Huge Sister (feminism, loosely speaking) go? She needs to begin watching us once again, watching ourselves in this not-so-funhouse, vital, essential artistic medium, TV.

three. This Week on Sober House. Dr. Drew Pinsky is panicking as he wraps up while using damaged, insolent and feckless minor celebrities from this season, as he has only signed the outrageous Tila Tequila for next year – apparently, no other star is willing to go on board. Maintain in mind that that is a show wherever Jeff Conaway is considered a star, as would be the fired bass player from the long-defunct Alice in Chains. Can’t Joyce DeWitt pretend she huffs glue?

4. Michaels Mania. A somewhat frail and shaky Bret Michaels created it on the finale with the Celebrity Apprentice this Sunday night, wearing his trademark samurai headband, and working those baby blues that still drive rock girls wild. Trump and his team – using the exception of the eerily astute Ivanka Trump – kept posing him against Holly Robinson Peete inside a “heart vs. head” contest, even though he was, throughout the show and far and away, the greater player. At any rate, Trump’s heart went out towards the man who crawled off his deathbed to support his diabetes charity, and we all pulled out our handkerchiefs. Michaels is so loveable, so charismatic all of a sudden, one wants to listen to, for that first time in my circumstance, his band Poison; and look at his sex film (with Pamela Anderson) with brand new interest. He could be the primary celebrity-in-reverse I've ever observed, and could not rock tight jeans plus a cowboy hat harder. The man was even photogenic in his coma. Having always been behind him, I felt vindicated and moved by Michaels’ victory, watching Trump’s tiny, pursed lips bark “Ya hiyad.”

5. Possibly Saddest of All is the last season of American Idol as we know it coming to an end, with Simon Cowell’s imminent departure, and Paula Abdul still gone. Then once again, individuals of you who have endured, like me, the most tedious season ever (so considerably so that Fantasia’s guest appearance was electric), should be relieved to under no circumstances once more have to hear an exhausted, sick-of-it-all Randy Jackson puling “Dog, yo, dog” over thunderous and needless applause for yet one more massacre of the song that was under no circumstances good to commence with – Hallelujah.

The Globe and Mail