YouTube Music Awards

You don't succeed by doing what's been done before. Poorly.

This is why labels should not be worried about monoliths stealing their business. Google can't get any traction with All Access, no one seems to be aware that Microsoft's OS comes with music. Disruption may happen, but it'll come from left field, from nobodies. That's the way it always works. Like with Napster. The music business should be more afraid and inspired by college dropouts than behemoths who look at the game the usual way.

Like one continuous show.

Maybe it should have been one clip a day?

And YouTube got bit on the ass by its counter, something that screws bands all day long. With only 200,000 people watching when I tuned in, it already felt like a non-happening. And if the true number was higher, isn't that the case the day your video gets traction, it takes a long time for the count to catch up?

But first and foremost the YouTube Music Awards prove that hype is everything.

MTV has a moribund channel with no music yet it overloads us every summer with information regarding its upcoming VMAs, which haven't been watchable in years. But people do. Because in this disconnected environment we gravitate to the established. And the new with traction. And the YouTube Music Awards had no traction. Like a new band they could stay in the market for ten years to find out if they've got anything, but Google is famous for losing focus.

Have you heard Sky Ferreira's music?

I certainly haven't. But there have been articles in every publication known to man hyping her album. I know who she is. I'm tempted to check out her tracks on Spotify, just so I can speak intelligently about her. That's the game today, be knowledgeable about something so you can testify in front of your friends.

Before that it was Haim.

And the funny thing is the band already seems dead. And if you think it's reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac, you never heard the original band (in any of its incarnations!) The modern effects thrown in...ruin the effect!

I'm not saying Haim is bad, it's listenable, try "The Wire," but I am saying it doesn't live up to the hype. But the hype made me aware.

There was no hype about the YouTube Music Awards. Sure, there were some newspaper articles, but that shows you how much the target audience reads the paper.

As for the site's own real estate... The truth is most people don't use YouTube's home page as a portal, the real estate's not super-valuable.

As for pre-roll ads, which we all hate, I didn't see one for the YouTube Music Awards.

This is the gang that couldn't shoot straight, are they really that inept?

As for Spike Jonze and Jason Schwartzman...they're the heroes of those who run Google, the late thirtysomethings. Those two guys mean almost nothing to the target audience. They should have skewed younger, much younger. At least find people with youngster cred, like Tavi Gevinson, the famous fashion blogger. Sure, many are unaware of her, but at least she evidences some cool. And speaking of hype...I found out about her first in the "New Yorker" and in numerous articles thereafter.

If you're a big player who wants big success, you've got to do a saturation campaign. There's no bubbling up from the bottom. If you're not annoying the target audience with a plethora of messages, you're not gonna succeed.

Kind of like Arcade Fire. Whose brilliant PR campaign executed over a period of months, even including the vaunted SNL and special shows, resulted in an album sale of...140,000 copies.

Ugh.

Because either you're a household name band/brand, like Eminem, or a generational favorite, like Drake, or...most people just don't care.

Doesn't matter if Arcade Fire won a Grammy. Their music has not been mainstream so the mainstream doesn't care about them. They occupy a large niche.

So don't have outsized expectations.

And please innovate.

YouTube should have tied in with...CHROMECAST! Oops, they own that product. They should have gotten everybody to throw the show up on their flat screen. They should have gotten someone to pay, Apple TV or Xbox or PlayStation... But competitors hate to help you out, not in the holy war that is Silicon Valley tech.

And there should have been a contest, and gamification.

And maybe, they should have printed a schedule, via an app, like every festival known to man. That's right, they should have told us when the acts were going to appear, that would have switched things up.

And there should have been an after plan. To get people to watch. Because without buzz, and no follow-up story, no one was interested in seeing these clips.

What if they gave an awards show and no one came?

We found out.

P.S. Twitter doesn't build shows, it enhances those with significant traction. People only want to tweet about an event if everybody else is.

P.P.S. Google is so inept, they didn't even put out the self-congratulatory press release. In a world where every candidate for office spins, Google stayed out of the game. Nerds can invent, but they'll never be properly socialized.


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