On this world
I will never stop being surprised by this digital world. How can you be exploring it many hours every week for years, and still find so much unexpected beauty, creativity, misery, shit, information and disinformation, all in new formats, all tangled and evolving, threatening and blossoming in real time?
Some parts of what follows may be wrong, I really don't know. (And that's the spirit of the web, too).
Today by sheer chance I found Mia Rose, a teenager from Wimbledon who posted on YouTube some videos of herself singing covers, and also a few songs by her own. She is very talented (far more than those dummies from X Factor and alike) and gained an impressive base of fans in a short time.
It happened that some executives of some big record label in the USA noticed that, too. And they wanted to talk to her, who is just a girl from London with an account in YouTube. So by the time you read these lines she may be signing her first contract with a major label, which is wonderful and disappointing at the same time.
I mean, being under 20 she has already arrived in weeks to where many other good musicians will never arrive, and that is thanks to that over-hyped, web -2.0, massive store of frames with null usability called YouTube. And that's great.
But, on the other hand, she had already become known and recognised without the need for any of those greedy companies. Is she going to betray the spirit of the web? (Mia, this is mere rambling — go ahead and become rich. I really mean it).
People with true talent, people born with that “touch” within, they just need some good advice, a modest investment and a little bit of experience to achieve big things. That is Imogen Heap. Or Kevin Smith. Both are talented, very young professionals who (I believe) really enjoy doing what they do. Both sold or re-mortgaged their goods to fund their first works. None of them will enter Forbes' elite, but that's a false “elite” anyway. And they are honest. Yeah, honesty doesn't quote on the stock exchange, but that's beside the point.
The web simply leverages that old formula. Advice comes easy from the internet when you are giving something away and know how to ask for it. Initial investments become even lower for all those artists with the need for physical tools (sequencers, video editors, press) which may be replaced by computers. Experience… well, that you still need. That's why it's called “experience”. (Otherwise it would be called “Windows Vista” and nobody would need it).
This story goes on with some youtubers claiming that Mia Rose is a fake (sic) and some odd controversy about whether her visits and comments are real, and whether she's “cheating”. Maybe people envious of her success. Maybe they are right. In any case I don't understand why the discussion is about her position on YouTube's ranking instead of her merit.
Now, the last piece of this story is the best one. Via Mike Abundo I learn that some visitor who Mia doesn't even know decided to add drums to one of her songs. Then someone else took that mix and added a bass line. The result is a moving example of spontaneous, simple, altruistic, agile collaboration to create something beautiful… on the web.
