Wanna be a Viral Video Star?

If you take interest in popular culture, you would notice that gone were the days where singers and artistes were discovered by Artiste and Repertoire Managers (A&R) of recording labels. The path to superstardom was made easier with the emergence of reality tv-based singing competitions; where the contestants were given airtime to showcase their talents. Some managed to secure honours and acceptance in the music industry while others' career just got canned.

Now, the next approach to superstardom is to have online presence, by posting your clips through YouTube.

Marie Digby, arguably the most popular Youtube-born artiste.

Take for instant Marie Digby (pronounce as Mar-ee-ay Digby). According to her fansite, she is just the most talented(?) singer, songwriter and musician performing on the Internet today. Marie's video cover of Rihanna's "Umbrella" has been viewed at a pace of 20,000 a day.

Marié's full name is Marié Christina Digby. She is of Japanese-Irish American ancestry. Marié lives in Los Angeles and was born in NYC. Marié won the Pantene Pro-Voice songwriting contest in 2004 with her heart felt autobiographical song "Miss Invisible".

I have to say that i admire the fact that she utilizes YouTube as her publicity tool to give herself major online presence.

By posting hit songs such as Rihanna's "Umbrella", Britney Spear's "Gimme More" and Jordin Spark's "No Air", she gained online traffic because viewers who searched for the artistes will stumbled across her posts as well.

Marie Digby created a new niche that all new aspiring musicians followed suit. It is not enough to just mount your webcam and sings infront of the PC anymore. You have to look good, put on some make up and post personalized announcements. A few examples of Youtube-born stars are American Savannah Outen, Londoner Mia Rose, and Dutch Esmee Denters.

Savannah Outen American singer who gained popularity on YouTube. Outen began posting videos of herself singing on YouTube in March 2007.

One of my favourite Youtube-born, breakthrough artiste. Esmee is a Dutch singer who regularly covers songs from Brandy, Mariah Carey, One Republic, Natasha Beddingfield, Beyonce, and Justin Timberlake. In 2008, Timberlake himself discovered her talent and Denters signed up as the first artist under Timberlake's new label imprint Tennman in association with Interscope.

Mia Rose is an English-Portuguese singer discovered in YouTube. She quickly rose to the top of the most-viewed rankings and became the most-subscribed musician ever. With over 214,300 subscribers as of October 11, 2009, Mia Rose is in the all-time top 5 of subscribed musicians on YouTube.

Marie earned my respect as she branded herself by being first in her own-created category: YouTube-born Celebrity. Being the first in a new category is the most important essential in PR and branding.

And the next viral video stars are....

Janice and Sonia Lee!!

This Korean-born Australian HOT twins are steadfastly becoming the household name. Their video links were forwarded around the globe mostly via social networking Facebook. To date, they have over 200,000 views on this cover song "Officially Missing You" by Tamia.
Good harminizing and two gorgeous TWINS! What else not to love, right?

Those who hasn't check her out, please do. Thanks to Emilia for the video. She felt that in a personal way, she 'discovered' the twins. I bet all of her fans felt the same way too. I guessed it is safe to say that A&R execs and managers are the Netizens now.