Recently, I've become convinced that my taste in music might as well be algorithmically generated. My Spotify Discovery Weekly playlists and doomscrolling on Instagram seem to have increasingly more sway over what I want to listen to. I may not be active on TikTok, but I've noticed more and more songs that got their start there trickling down to meet me where I am online. And as anyone from Lil Nas X to Rick Astley could tell you, it's hard to overstate how quickly your life can change when an earworm of yours goes viral.
Of course, before aspiring artists were marketing their music in 15 second clips, they were uploading to YouTube. A decade ago, a Nielsen study found that more teens listened to music there than on any other platform. And few epitomize the YouTube-native music scene of the 2010s more than Kurt Hugo Schneider. The renowned internet star made his name as a true multi-hyphenate: arranging, recording, producing, writing, directing, editing, and mixing hundreds of songs and videos for himself and his collaborators. By the middle of the decade his YouTube channel had amassed more fans than those of both Lady Gaga and the NBA. Recording with him could put you on a fast track to superstardom. In a 2016 profile of Schneider in WIRED, writer David Pierce compared him to one of America's most influential music producers, calling him "Rick Rubin for a new generation."
At the time, Pierce wrote, YouTube megastars like Schneider could nab a record deal in an instant, but that was no longer the be-all and end-all. When you release directly onto the internet you can retain a degree of creative control that would be hard to preserve under the auspices of a major label. As Pierce put it, "Radio's not dead, and neither is iTunes. But they're not the future; YouTube is." It's hard to say how well that line has aged. Schneider is still making videos on the platform, where he now has a whopping 13 million subscribers. He's also pretty active on TikTok.
Where do you go to seek out new music? What do you think it takes to have a hit go viral today? Let me know what you think in the comments below the story.
See you next week!
Eve
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حبيبي ليس يعدله حبيب *** ولا لسواه في قلبي نصيب حبيب غاب عن بصري وسمعي *** ولكن في فؤادي ما يغيب يا حبيب ...
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