What I love about “Copenhagen” is that it is as much director Dave Willis’s work as it is Lucinda Williams’s. Music videos used to be only about promoting the artist. That made them no better than a commercial. That same could actually be said about many of the songs themselves. But when a musician is [...]
Through their Musicians Wanted program, YouTube is reaching out to the underground music scene and fast tracking musicians through the YouTube partner application process. This is really good news for independent artists. And now that program has extended to countries all over the world.
Before there was “Pants On The Ground” there was…
DJ Earworm has created a mashup masterpiece with “United State of Pop 2009 (Blame it on the Pop)” By chopping the audio and video clips from the top Billboard top 25, Earworm has achieved something truly amazing here. The end result is much much greater than the sum of its parts. Our hats are off [...]
Here’s a really cool music video by Esteban Diácono created entirely in After Effects with the Trap Code plugins from Red Giant. The song is Ljósið by Ólafur Arnalds. It represents a beautiful execution of a very simple idea. The results are poetic.
This is a great example of a a low budget music video done right. Thanks to Gut Perry (the main actor) for posting this on YouTube. It now has almost 200,000 views. The total budget for this video was about $200 (no kidding!).
OFFICIAL VIDEO- Marty Falle’s hit song, “Hoochie Coochie Gal From the Buckeye State” from the album, Ohio.
While VEVO continues to build its ivory tower of main stream music, YouTube keep opening doors for independent musicians. Through their Musicians Wanted program, YouTube is reaching out to the underground music scene and fast tracking musicians through the YouTube partner application process. This is really good news for independent artists. And now that program has extended to countries all over the world. that is Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, Spain, the U.K., Sweden, the Czech Republic, Argentina and New Zealand (from the Official YouTube Blog).
While this particular video (with tongue firmly in cheek) makes the whole thing look ever so simple, “Quit your day job and get paid to make music”, there is a definitely a lot of opportunity here. What indie bands do with that opportunity is up to them. Unlike MySpace, the formerly reigning darling of the self-published indie music scene, the obvious focus here is video. Now on top of spending weeks or months in the studio to produce their tracks, bands now have to consider the whole visual element, and the pressure is on to be just as visually creative as they are musically. I love how in this video, Jack and Nataly offer the advice “Don’t get signed” and their fans reiterate their sentiment in the comments. There has always been this conundrum for indie bands between “selling out” and losing all that indie cool factor that their cult followings savor, and “cashing in” on actually making a living and expanding their reach. It looks like at long last, YouTube is solving this problem. Or is YouTube’s “Musician’s Wanted” program, becoming a partner essentially a new kind of “getting signed”? Of course going the YouTube route, musicians get to keep the rights to their work. That is the big difference. But it will be interesting to see what becomes of this. Will we eventually see YouTube sponsored tours of up and coming partner bands? Give me your thoughts in the comments.
January 5th, 2011 at 9:01 am
This is great news, I just signed up to test it out.
Do you know if your accounts need to have a lot of daily views to get accepted?
I’m going to post this out to twitter now.
Chris
April 30th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
I just started with a Production Company, low budget to no budget right now, that means their giving hand outs good for first few months but I wanted to change the drift ,I am their assistant just need pointers,direction, I need you guys help! so if you will contact me via email: email hidden; JavaScript is required or by phone: 813.484.1530
December 8th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Is the new YouTube interface an improvement for indie musicians?
January 11th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Have just applied to Youtube, though with such a (currently) small audience, it didn’t look too hopefully. Fancy increasing my audience? here’s a video from my recent tour of Outback Australia:
http://youtu.be/Rel0nfusWc4
Thanks! Here’s hoping!
January 11th, 2012 at 5:45 pm
I just watched your video. I dig the song. While the editing is jarring, cutting from one audio environment to another rather than using a consistent base track, I think that is kind of interesting. It may be a little tentative though. I mean, it that was what you were going for and its part of the music video concept, then really go for it and make it clear that it IS intentional. And if its not intentional, then you should re-edit it now while you just have a handful of views.
January 11th, 2012 at 6:06 pm
it was intentional.. perhaps that’ll come across a bit clearer if I put the next one up as one take. any suggestions of how to really ‘go for it’. thanks for watching