I can imagine that seeing someone have huge success with a viral video using your music must be both pleasant and annoying.
Pleasant in that the popularity of the video gets your music out to people who might never have heard it before. O-Zone’s Dragostea Din Tei comes to mind — a lot fewer people ever heard of it before the Numa Numa guy came up with his Youtube video. (As an aside, I really find him annoying.)
Annoying in that it has to bite just a bit that someone else has more success with your music than perhaps you did.
If you’re smart (or lucky), you manage to create the most viral video yourself, like OK Go and their treadmill video for “Here it Goes Again“.
As a regular punter, I’m happy for viral videos because, without them I would never have heard some of my favourite songs.
I was looking at my Youtube updates today and decided to look at the featured videos on the Youtube home page. One of the videos today was Corey VIdal‘s video of him lipsynching in four-part harmony to comedy a cappella group Moosebutter‘s Star Wars song, a tribute to John Williams’ soundtrack work:
He does a pretty credible job of it. What’s funniest — and why the video works so well — is that his appearance fits many of the voices, and his lipsynching is really good. So it really looks like it’s all him.
Moosebutter’s page for the song includes the lyrics, radio-quality streaming audio of the song, and the option to purchase a copy of the song. You can also browse their other songs. I was going to buy a copy of this song but, you know, I like this enough that I think I’m going to just go for the whole enchilada and buy all of their stuff. The MP3s are DRM-free, which is a bonus. (Shh, don’t tell anyone that I’m actually paying for music. ;-))
(As an aside, how bizarre is it that anyone, let alone a 21-year-old from Ontario, can manage to ‘do Youtube “for a living”‘. I realize that a lot of work can go into making videos to post on Youtube but the idea that you can make a living doing it is just surreal.)
Life Begins at 41...or maybe 43 
I am married to the man who started moosebutter, wrote or arranged all the songs, performed in all of them (some of them using his voice for all the tracks) etc., and I’d say you pretty much hit the nail on the head. It’s fantastic to see his music finally getting attention; agonizing to know that he’s the only person who actually has done what Corey is getting credit for–singing all parts to this song (although he didn’t for the recording Corey used). HOWEVER, I feel more strongly than my husband, who is pleased with all this. It helps that Corey is a great guy who used the songs with permission and has kept in touch and been very fair about sharing credit. It’s worked so well for moosebutter that they and Corey are already planning to collaborate on more projects in the future.
I’m glad that Tim is pleased with the whole thing. Sounds like he’s a much better person than I am. LOL It’s not my music but *I* am starting to get annoyed by all of the comments congratulating Corey for his great musical talent. Goes to show that people don’t bother looking at the actual video information. Glad to see that at least of few people are making it past the video to the real site.
The Story behind “Star Wars A Capella”, a news piece about Corey Vidal and his Youtube work.
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By the way, additional background information about the creation of the song is available at moose musings on the official moosebutter site.
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