By Charlotta Hedman
Plenty of aspiring starlets out there are using Youtube to reach a global audience. And not all of them are failing. In this digital age you can live far away from big cities and never play an open gig night in your life and still get discovered. Dutch singer Esme Denters was famously spotted by Justin Timberlake after rising in the Youtube rankings. She’s now got a record deal and is trying to go the mainstream route to fame. The question is if her Youtube fans will buy that.
Someone who’s gone about it in a different way is Julia Nunes also known as jaaaaaaa (not the most SEO friendly name). Nunes started out posting cute videos of herself singing and playing the ukulele. She also quickly became a favourite among the Youtube geeks and gained an online following. Unlike Esme she decided to release records independently and stick to a different route to fame. But what does it feel like starting out on Youtube, looking for a creative outlet and perhaps fame. Ly, also known as DancingHeather, is someone who’s trying
What I do right now is testing and trying to discover the world of music, modelling and a bit of acting, says Ly.
I kept an eye on Youtube from the start, even during the first year when it wasn’t that famous. I looked at every famous video there, analysed the people who did videos and gained the courage to start doing something myself. So after a year of watching all this (and Youtube still wasn’t that big) I learned some editing skills on Macbook and recorded myself singing some of my favourite electronic tracks. I edited it so that I removed my voice and replaced with the original track and made small weird home music videos to show my passion for the songs. I got lots of support and the Youtube thing suddenly started to grow a lot.
I got lots of comments, both supportive and hating and too much attention. I knew my videos were a bit weird and home made because that was all I could do at the time and I felt I needed to back off a bit. At this time Youtube went from small cute community to a business and the businesses who’d joined started taking over most of views.
I was happy with backing off and starting to do a bit of my own songs with DJ Überphät and some other artists. I met lots of intelligent and interesting people in music industry and also gained more interest in modelling.
If things were ideal in this world, I would love to give out my album, do professional music videos, perform, model and work hard in this industry with supportive and great people. But I understand this is much to ask because there are many very talented people in this world who would love to work in this industry.
I didn’t choose Youtube to be my promotion tool, but since I kept an eye on it since the beginning and was a bit of an Internet addict at the same time, it was very enjoyable to test it out and be part of it. Youtube is one of the best promotion tools that artists can have right now because Internet is worldwide and people like to watch free stuff online in time when they choose.
