By Jen Oliver, Project Lead for WXPN’s 885 Most Memorable Musical Moments.
Bruce Warren is on vacation and will resume the Daily Dose Monday, August 13th.

Music “Made” by the Internet

The Web has made superstars of video artists, writers, entrepreneurs, animators, even lip-synchers. The Internet’s effect on popularizing music, though, has been seismic; it’s the singular business-slash-artform that has experienced the greatest virtual upheaval. The Internet has changed the way music is distributed, digested, communicated, and shared, and its viral properties have the power to make unknown artists into household names.

Lily Allen is a prime example. In 2004, after being dropped from the British label Regal Records, a disillusioned Lily took up horticulture. She eventually returned to recording with limited success. But after posting demos to her MySpace, she began acquiring thousands of new fans. The Observer Music Monthly took notice of Lily’s online success and wrote about the trend. By the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly named “Alright, Still” as one of the top albums of the year, and by January 2007, Lily had cracked the top 20 Billboard album charts stateside.

YouTube has had a similar effect. In 2004, OK Go was on their second album and had achieved nominal success. But when they released a homemade, awesomely choreographed video for the song “Here it Goes Again,” it caught a viral wind and sailed with it to the tune of over 9 million hits by August 2006. Now they have more than 20 million hits.

Part of the fun (and most of the challenge for marketers) is that you never know where the next click is going to come from; you never know what will be sticky. As for the next Internet music star, my money’s on Bat for Lashes.