Viral Madness & Bieber (because I love him)

Hey guys.

I'm back. You can celebrate now. Anyway, I have been thinking about making a comeback for quite some time now, but I have been thinking about my 'blogosphere' voice. Than I decided, f*** it, I'll just write about what ever I want to write about. Yes. That is what I decided. This one will even be a surprise, because I'm not complaining about anything. Yay. This is new.

Without further ado, the topic of this blog post: my dissertation. Please don't be discouraged, everyone finds it really interesting, I promise.

So, I am writing about how videos go viral on the internet machine and how/if/should the music industry integrate the phenomenon into its marketing strategies. This topic combines everything I am interested in: marketing, production, film, music, viral videos, YouTube, the internet, social media, etc. My proposal got approved (yay me!) and my supervisor recommended me to find some videos to use as a case study.

So this is the hard part! I know, I know - my life is soooo difficult, watching YouTube videos all day in my lovely Shoreditch flat. It actually really is. I have been struggling with this, so I would love if you guys could comment any suggestions or ideas in the comments (even if you don't know me, that's cool).

My inner struggle is whether I should take the big hitters we all cringe just thinking about, like Call Me Maybe, Rebecca Black's Friday or Gangnam Style (even Justin Bieber, he got discovered online and then he did the whole Girlfriend video competition thing, resulting in the spin-of internet celebrity 'Overly Attached Girlfriend'). However, I am already kind of cringing over this now, and this is before researching them a lot (I have a little bit). Also, the success of those particular ones is not quite determined yet. I know they are internationally all over the place right now, but is it lasting? In contrast to this, I could look at someone who had an international hit, like Cee Lo Green's Fuck You, and analyse what has happened once the peek has past.

Other suggestions, could be taking bands that may have not had as wide of a spread, but have made name of themselves due to their videos going viral. The best examples would be Walk of the Earth and OK Go (with only 140m and 40m views). The angle here is to take bands who are not as involved with the industry directly (not everyone can get Bieber to tweet about them) so to speak (I know it is not as simple as that, but I hope you follow) and see how they are using videos to promote the music.

I would even like to look into how the 'mainstream' is becoming more interested in what-ever-it-is catching the internet's attention, e.g. Ellen DeGeneres regularly invites the latest internet hit to her show.  

You may realise, I haven't decided anything. I would love anyone's input or ideas, I have read the internet back and forth and the ones I have mentioned seem to be the typical examples. Please don't judge me if I'm overlooking something extremely obvious (but tell me if I am!), because I'm just letting you into the very first steps of the project.

I am super interested in this project and love talking about it. Anyone who has interest, input or just something to say, please don't be afraid to contact me. I would love to hear from you here, on twitter, facebook, email, etc.

Oh by the way, I'm not embedding the videos, because it makes the site really slow. Plus, you people all know what I'm referring to. If you are really interested the titles link to the original content.

*Sidenote: I know how Of Monsters and Men's Little Talk has got 35m views and MTV Music Award Nomination for their video(ish), but I think that has got more to do with them being really famous, rather than the video making them famous, if that makes sense.