Social media drive summer's hit songs
Updated: 2012-09-02 07:56
By Ben Sisario(The New York Times)
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For decades, the song of the summer would emerge each year following a pattern as predictable as the beach tides. Pop radio would get it rolling before school let out, and soon the song - inevitably one with a big, playful beat and an irresistible hook - would blare from car stereos everywhere. Then came singalongs as the song finally became ubiquitous around the Fourth of July. In 1987, it was Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." In 2003, Beyonce's "Crazy in Love."
But the success of this summer's hit, Carly Rae Jepsen's cheerfully flirty "Call Me Maybe," shows how much the hitmaking machine, as well as the music industry itself, has been upended by social media.
Only a year ago, the charts were dominated by stars who had come out of the old machine of radio and major-label promotion: Katy Perry, Rihanna, Adele, Maroon 5. This year's biggest hits - "Call Me Maybe," Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" and Fun.'s "We Are Young" - started in obscurity and were helped along by YouTube and Twitter before coming to the mainstream media.
For "Call Me Maybe," which was No.1 for nine weeks, the longest run of the year, the critical piece was YouTube. After Justin Bieber and friends posted a video of themselves lip-syncing to it in February, hundreds of fan tributes followed. Alongside Ms. Jepsen's own video, which has been watched 212 million times, versions by Katy Perry, the Cookie Monster ("Share It Maybe") and the United States Olympic swim team turned it into an audiovisual meme.
A tribute version even brought the song to the attention of President Obama. In an interview with a radio station, he said: "I've never actually heard the original version of the song. I saw this version where they spliced up me from a whole bunch of different speeches that I made. They kind of mashed together an Obama version of it."
Nearly two-thirds of teenagers listen to music on YouTube, more than any other medium, Nielsen said. Ms. Jepsen, 26, said in a recent interview that "the viral videos are what's been the driving force for this. It was insane to see that the music could spread that far because of the Internet. It's a cool thing. It changes the game completely."
Last fall, Ms. Jepsen released "Call Me Maybe" in Canada to preview her second album. It was a minor hit in Canada when Mr. Bieber heard it. On December 30, 2011, Mr. Bieber told his 15 million Twitter followers that "Call Me Maybe" was "possibly the catchiest song I've ever heard lol." The single has sold eight million downloads around the world.
Ms. Jepsen's album, "Kiss," will be released in September, when she will hit the road as an opening act for Mr. Bieber.
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are now record labels' textbook tools for starting a marketing campaign. But the song's trajectory also shows the continuing power of radio, which record executives say is still essential to turn any song - no matter how much online buzz it has - into a genuine smash.
In March and April, when "Call Me Maybe" was getting tens of millions of views on YouTube, it had relatively low radio play- fewer than 5,000 spins a week on Top 40 stations in the United States, according to Nielsen. It hit No.1 on iTunes on May 27, but took almost a month to reach No.1 on Billboard's singles chart, which counts sales, airplay and streaming services. By then it had about 20,000 spins a week on multiple radio formats
"There's not a million-seller out there that doesn't have radio play," said Jay Frank, chief executive of the label DigSin. "But its first million generally doesn't come from radio."
The New York Times
(China Daily 09/02/2012 page12)