Viral Videos in Music Production

I would like to introduce my subject for this post. The subject is viral videos in music production. I want to investigate some of the attributes of videos that have gone viral. This is an area that used to be the domain of TV production, but now is done through your computer. The authority of control has changed from the TV executives to those who hold the mouse. The mouse has become the largest beast in the forest.

 Let me start by saying there may be certain factors that we can point to in these videos, but I want to make it clear that I don’t believe there is a way predict or manufacture one of these from a formula. If you look at the history of the most watched videos on Youtube, there is no way to make a pattern of it. The Pakistani man in the London fish market singing “1 pound fish” to become an international celebrity goes beyond my ability to explain such things,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETSl8gWsFZ0.  The story goes that the man’s boss insisted he yell to the customers to get their attention; he didn’t want to yell so he sang his song instead. In doing so he became an international internet celebrity. He was greeted as a hero when he returned to his home country. Go figure!?

Beyond the unexplainable, there is some true star power at work in this arena. Let me qualify what I am about to show you. I am an observer, not a fan. So these assessments are trying be as objective as possible and not an attempt to convince you that you should watch these. I am not pushing these, but they do seem to be pushing the wave of public attention, so let’s look at some of them.

In a study of most watched videos on Youtube you can’t go far without running into Lady Gaga. She has become a chameleon that changes appearance almost as often as most of us change shirts. The number of views she has amassed over the last several years are astounding. I stopped counting at 1 billion views. Yes that’s a “B” for billion. Her most watched video is “Bad Romance” with 508 million views. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I  Bad Romance    508 million.

Summary  Gaga Is pulled out of container, stripped and has some kind of drink forced down her throat. Later she is thrown in front of a group of men.to dance and sing about wanting bad romance with them. Later she struts toward one man sitting on a bed waiting for her. The camera shoots from behind her as she walks up and pulls off her top. The scene shifts and shows her standing in front of a bed that is ablaze as she sings. The final scene shows her sitting on a bed that is completely burnt and charred with a burnt skeleton lying beside her. She has no damage on her from the fire. Obviously the bad romance had no effect on her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wagn8Wrmzuc   Judas   161 mil

Summary  The next video is one called Judas. It has religious overtones and references that mock what the Bible has to say. Without getting into that analysis too deeply let me just quote the lyrics she sings at one point in the song, “Jesus is my virtue; Judas is the demon I cling to.” That’s pretty self-explanatory without over analyzing on my part. She sings throughout the song that she loves Judas and want s to wash his feet, which is done in the video. Strange stuff, but it has been viewed 161 million times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U   Telephone 160 mil

Summary  Another interesting entry is one called Telephone which also includes Beyonce. Here Gaga is dragged into prison, stripped and thrown into cell. This seems to be a recurring theme in several of her videos. Later after she is released from prison she gets in a truck with Beyonce and they go to a diner in the desert and poison a dozen people. One guy seemed to be a target of Beyonce and the others were collateral damage.

The last one I would like to look at is not one with the most views but it might be the most reveling in many ways. It is a duet with Mick Jagger on one of the Rolling Stones biggest hits, “Gimme Shelter” She was a guest of the Stones at their concert, but she comes on stage and takes over. It only has 354 thousand views since December.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWvVzxvkioQ  Gimme Shelter  354k

Summary  Gaga dances on stage in 8” heels. She floats around the stage, up and down stairs and never misses a beat. Mick watches her to see watch she will do next. I have seen Mick on stage in many concerts with many Divas, but I have never seen him upstaged like he was with Gaga. It was interesting because with the heels she was actually taller than Mick. I wonder if that was planned? The thing that stands out to me is that she was in charge, I have never seen that before. I know the Stones are old and past their prime, but the fact that they are still doing this says a lot.

To try to summarize her popularity is difficult. Her videos often show her being pushed and shoved into prison cell and often stripped and thrown down by others that seem to be in control. That seems to be a way of attracting sympathy to her is my guess. The videos combined with her public appearances show that most all of what she does is so truly outrageous that it is planned to attract as much attention as possible. If that is the goal, it has certainly worked. For instance, she appeared at one public event wearing a dress that was covered in sliced raw beef. What did that mean? Was she against animal cruelty? No one knew, but they talked about it for days and weeks afterwards. To the best of my knowledge, she never made a public statement about it. It seems what everyone made up was better than anything she could say. All those opinions were also competing with each other as well. Can I explain this star that has eclipsed the rest of the music world? No. Do I enjoy the lyrics and images, not really. But I do have to admire the phenomenal impact she has had on the entertainment world. She recently injured her hip while in the middle of a huge tour. She was forced to cancel the remaining dates on the tour because she will be forced to have surgery. A long list of big cities was Included in that tour. Seemingly out of place on that list was Greensboro, NC. I am not sure how we rated such a superstar. I wish her a speedy recovery back to her journey through the music world.

Just as a side note, Lady Gaga’s Facebook had 55 million likes. https://www.facebook.com/ladygaga?fref=ts

 Lady Gaga’s website  . http://www.ladygaga.com/Default.aspx#!updates

Lady Gaga’s concert announcement.  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/lady-gaga-cancels-tour-because-of-hip-injury/

Michael Edwards

Thursday, February 14, 2013

How to Use Web 2.0

Musician John Mayer

John Mayer is an accomplished guitarist. He has been recording albums since 2002. He plays a blues / rock style that is wonderful if you love old school rock guitar work. John is taking full advantage of web 2.0 exposure. I have found him present on 11 sites that promote, play and sell his music. John’s target audience is people who love hard core blues rock guitar. I purposely did not put an age range on this. While I was searching the facts on John Mayer on the web, I found that my niece is also a fan of John Mayer. She is a freshman in college and I am not! She’s not yet 20 and I just turned 60. So I can draw the conclusion that good music can transcend age boundaries. Based on what I have found I think John is making good use of web 2.0 features to promote his music. These images were barrowed from John's Facebook page.

As one of few musicians to achieve both critical acclaim and popular appeal, the seven-time Grammy Award winner has earned accolades for each album release while selling in excess of 17 million albums worldwide.

Known as a musician who defies genre boundaries, John Mayer is well known for collaborations with a range of artists. From rock to blues, hip-hop to jazz to country, Mayer has performed and/or recorded with Eric Clapton, BB King, Buddy Guy, T-Bone Burnett, Herbie Hancock, Dixie Chicks, Jay Z and Alicia Keys.

1      Johnnmayer.com   music and social net

2.    FaceBook.com  social net  5,639,617 likes   that’s pretty strong

3.    Twitter.com/JohnMayer social net  96,306

4.    Tumblr  social  JohnMayer.tumblr.com

5.    Youtube.com video and music  search for John Mayer

6.    Itunes  music  itunes.apple.com/artist/johnmayer

7.    Amazon music  amazon.com/John-Mayer

8.    Google music  play.google.com/store/music/artist/John_Mayer

9.    Last.fm music and radio  last.fm/music/John+Mayer

10. Pandora music and radio  Pandora.com/John_Mayer-artist

11. Slacker music and radio  slacker.com/artist/john-mayer

What's a blog?

A blog is a way to communicate. What would you like to communicate? It can be anything from baking cookies to solving the problems in the Middle East. That’s a wide area, you should be able to find a place to jump in.

Blogs are most often written by one person. It can be a continuum of thoughts about some given topic. Sometimes blogs are written by a group of people, a committee or a think tank. In that case authors can share or take turns composing the articles. Either from one or several people, blogs give information from a source that expresses a given set of ideas. Writers can attract a few friends or thousands of people worldwide. The ability to easily and quickly start this process makes it available to everyone. See www.blogger.com for simple instructions to begin.

What's a Wiki?

A wiki is not a flow of information from one source as a blog. A wiki is like a group of people brought together in a large room to set around a conference table and share ideas about a topic. They are there for the effect of sharing that the group offers. This is a dynamic environment that creates new ideas from the interaction. The difference from setting around the conference table is that by doing it electronically you can share with people from many different places that don’t have to travel to one place. Think of the possibilities. You could collaborate with experts in your field from several different countries. We are very fortunate to live in the United States, but it helps us tremendously to share views with people from other countries. I know it is a shock to some people, but not everyone thinks the same as us. To incorporate new thought processes into our lives gives us a much bigger and better understanding.

How is Wikipedia maintained?

This is a very interesting topic to discover. The goal of Wikipedia is to “offer every person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge”[1]. That’s a big goal.

Let’s look at how they function to keep growing and adding information. According to Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia, this is done through a collection of very knowledgeable and skilled volunteers. These volunteers continually monitor and vote on changes that are made to the articles daily. These votes are tallied and weighed by the strength of who voted to make the final decision on keeping a change. Through this process Wikipedia has maintained a solid core of information without graffiti or trash. The primary operating principal of Wikipedia is neutrality. They just do not take sides on issues whether it is genetic engineering or politics. They will offer the different opinions and who supports each view. If you look at this from the 10,000 foot view, this works for you and it works for those with different opinions. It is a presentation of “just the facts”.

If you look at an article on Wikipedia you will see in the upper right corner near the search box three choices; read, edit and history. By clicking edit, you have the ability to make changes to the article. These changes are listed by date and who made the change. Some changes show only an IP address for the change.

 By clicking the cur/prev area you can compare the current text with the previous version. The versions are dated to see the latest offering.

 I find this process fascinating. The test of the workings of the process can only be judged by the final product. Is it truthful, concise and readable by the majority of the world? If it is then it is succeeding toward it’s goal. A fuller understanding has given me a greater appreciation of the information being presented by Wikipedia. Can an online encyclopedia written by the masses give true and vital information. It seems the answer is yes.

For more detailed information on the inner workings of the approval process please listen to Jimmy Wales description. It is worth the time spent to hear it. This is the link to find it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html

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[1] Jimmy Wales on the birth of Wikipedia, 

Cloud Computing for Everyone

We want to discuss the concept of cloud computing as it applies to our daily lives. Often when we hear the term it sounds like it comes from some IT fantasy land  Actually you may have been using the process for some time and didn’t know it. If you have a gmail account, then you have been operating in the realm of cloud computing. Google keeps all of your hundreds (or thousands) of emails on their servers. When you log in to your account, you get a copy of the first batch of emails. If you click the next button, you go back to the previous 50. This is a great example of how computing in the clouds works.

Currently there are many more sophisticated ways to use this feature. Adobe Creative Cloud is one of the most elaborate. With a subscription you can access all of their current design, graphic, audio, video, photographic and website authoring programs. Adobe also gives you storage space to keep the files you create and will host 5 websites for you to get you started. In addition you get access to features in the software that is not available to the standard buy once programs. Plus as any programs are updated, your copies automatically update.

There may be some risks involved in your files being located in the cloud somewhere. If you want to share and collaborate with others, the cloud is a great way to do that. You don’t want to keep your precious original photographs of a special assignment only on the cloud. In that case you would need to keep the originals safe on your equipment. You can upload copies that are in process of being changed for coworkers to see.

Michael Edwards

Web Technologies

Tuesday, February 12, 2013