YouTube Star’s Grass Roots Actually Made Of Disney-Branded Astroturf
Though all involved say that Hollywood Records’ role in her online rise has been limited, label executives say they did nothing to discourage Ms. Digby from conveying the impression that she had stumbled into the spotlight. Ms. Digby says she chose the songs. Hollywood Records bought the Apple Inc. laptop computer and software that Ms. Digby — who lives with her parents in Los Angeles’s upscale Brentwood neighborhood — used to post her YouTube videos. Her version of “Umbrella” that is being sold at Apple’s iTunes Store is a high-quality studio recording made in June by Hollywood Records, which also made it available to radio stations.
Ms. Digby, whose exotic looks reflect her Japanese and Irish heritage, began writing songs as a high-school student and set off in search of a music career during her freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley. She says she found herself flying back to Los Angeles almost every week to play solo gigs at open-microphone nights at clubs. At age 19, she left Berkeley and concentrated full-time on music.
While Ms. Digby won regular bookings at nightclubs, things didn’t begin to click until a chance encounter with Barry Krost, a music manager whose past clients have included Cat Stevens. He took her on as a client and in early 2005 secured her a publishing deal with Rondor Music, a publisher that is part of Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group.
In late 2005, Ron Moss, Rondor’s executive vice president, connected Ms. Digby to a Hollywood Records executive named Allison Hamamura, who was immediately taken with the singer. Before the year was out, Hollywood Records had signed Ms. Digby. Since then, the label has worked with the singer on her debut album of original songs. The album was produced by Tom Rothrock, who also recorded a recent hit record by British singer James Blunt.
Once the album was completed late last year, Ms. Digby and her label began looking for ways to gain visibility. “I was coming out of nowhere,” Ms. Digby says. “I wanted to find a way to get some exposure.”
That’s when the idea of posting simple videos of cover songs came up. “No one’s going to be searching for Marié Digby, because no one knows who she is,” Mr. Bunt, the Hollywood Records senior vice president, reasoned. So she posted covers of hits by Nelly Furtado and Maroon 5, among others, so that users searching for those artists’ songs would stumble on hers instead. Her version of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” proved a nearly instant hit.
And from there, she became a YouTube “star”–although I’ll bet you a Tila Tequila-branded thong that her eventual record sales will be a number that’s less than 1% of her YouTube channel’s 2.3 million pageviews.
But honestly–the one thing about the YouTube era is that it’s been hard to not be suspicious of just who was backing a lot of these young-women-with-guitars-and-popular-songs, if only because of the recent tussles between YouTube posters and really aggressive music publishers; surely one of these ingenues, who probably don’t know thing one about the details of music publishing, would have been slapped with a terms-of-service violation (or even a lawsuit!) once their popularity grew big enough for people to take notice? Anyway, this whole song is yet another lesson that you shouldn’t believe most of what you read on the Internet, especially when it comes to curiously overhyped singers’ backstories. (Rick Rubin, you may want to take note.)
