Deep-minded lyrics such as in the title of this post must be the reason why Rebecca Black's song "Friday" has been able to get 34m YouTube views, get into the iTunes US single chart (no.44 as we speak) and Rebecca herself has been invited to Jay Leno. Apparently her mother paid Ark Music Factory $2000 for the recording and the video - I wonder if she expected it to be such a good investment!
Besides the joy dear Rebecca brings to the world, what makes this interesting? Well, I would like to argue that this is yet an example of how the creative industries have been turned up-side-down. As it becomes increasingly difficult to make money based on the sales of music (or some other kind of information) to an audience, it becomes increasingly interesting to make money from aspiring talents who dream of getting into the limelight. Sure the music industry has always been based on exploiting wannabe performers, but it hasn't been the primary basis for the the entire industry. And while we are pretty far from such a situation it looks as if the industry is moving towards that situation. Ark Music Factory may not get any industry cred for the work they do, but apparently they know how to make a buck. Rather than trying to sell songs to people who already have free and full access to all the music they want, they charge mothers for making recording of their talentless daughters. And look, once in a while the outcome turns out so incredibly bad it actually becomes a hit. The music industry continues to deliver lots of fuuuun, fun-fun-fun...
Do not miss the Bob Dylan version. Hilarious.
2 comments:
Friday in hell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti1D9t8n0qA
That "Bob Dylan"-version is actually quite good. I agree with your view on the Industry's state atm. Had the "pleasure" to hear what some of the Major Label's Execs had to say about today's music scene... they still don't have a clue. Be 15-20 years old and exploitable, have some sort of (sex-)appeal and they think it's worth putting it out. And 1 million YouTube hits don't equal 1 million actual supporters of the artist (thank God for the Thumbs-down-option). Another case of the industry juggling with useless numbers to create questionable profits. Music is being raped.
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