YouTube: Producer of the one hit wonder or platform for talent discovery?

Adam “Tay Zonday” Bahner, a PhD candidate in American studies at the University of Minnesota, produced Chocloate Rain. Since it first appeared on YouTube in July it has spread as a ‘meme’ around the web resulting in countless remixes (try seeing related videos on any of the YouTube videos).

If you’ve not seen the Chocolate Rain music video, it’s a simplistic, repetitive theme that has deep focus on society, racism, and inequality. It was highlighted on YouTube’s Featured section:

“Of course, it doesn’t hurt to get a little help from YouTube. The site’s editors have featured several of Zonday’s recent videos on their homepage, where a video can get tens of thousands of hits in an hour. On July 26, “Chocolate Rain” was even featured by YouTube alongside several of its pretenders.”

Hollywood is adopting to the online age, as there are more talent agencies scouring YouTube to find talent. This ties back to corporate life too, I know that many companies are using the web to find passionate users and customers to hire as employees.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 6:44 am and is filed under Video, Word of Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.