Is Viral Success A Myth?

Everyone is searching for viral success with one of their videos. There's been books written about it (a good one is Contagious: Why Things Catch On), presentations given at conferences, countless web articles, and much speculation about assumptions and formulas, but few are able to recreate the a success like OK Go's "Here It Goes Again," Rebecca Black's "Friday," Baauer's "Harlem Shake," or Psy's "Gangnam Style" (not to mention the numerous cat videos that routinely make the rounds).

But is it possible that what we think of as viral isn't actually viral after all? A number of recent articles and presentations propose that these videos were given a big corporate helping hand first before getting any kind of traction.

Take for instance Psy's "Gangnam Style." In a recent article on Pando, Brandon Mendelson postulates that the video's success is "actually the tail end of months and months of preparation, buying fake views and comments, an extensive PR campaign, and his video fitting a very specific need for the business model that fuels the web: The Page View Based Economy."

He goes on to state that Psy's record company purchased views and comments by using companies like Microworkers and Fiverr to trick the YouTube algorithm into thinking the video was exploding. It actually was, only as a result of gaming the system. 

Another article by Keven Ashton on Quartz points out that Baauer's "Harlem Shake" had only a few thousand views as a result of YouTube comic George Miller's video compilation. It was only after Warner Brother's owned Maker Studios made a version of the video to promote the studio itself and promoted it across it's many YouTube channels and Twitter did the video begin to get some traction. Other companies, DJs and bloggers jumped on, mostly to promote themselves, which caused Baauer's record label to take notice and begin its own promotion. Ashton provides a pretty thorough blow by blog of how it all took place, and it a lot less to do with what we think "viral" is rather than self-promotion. Here's the very first version the "Harlem Shake."

The gist of both articles is that what we believe and what's reality are frequently two different things when it comes to social media. It's becoming easier to manipulate many of the metrics that we use to measure success, if you have the money. 

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The Harlem Shake Gets Busted

Harlem Shake - Kansas Basketball Style

Use a sample, go to jail. Well, not exactly, but unless you get permission, you're going to be hearing from an attorney. The latest episode of uncleared samples comes with the recent viral hit "Harlem Shake" by Baauer. It seems that the DJ used pieces of Hector El Father's 2006 single "Maldades" and Plastic Little's "Miller Time" without getting permission first, and now they want some money.

The fact of the matter is that most major labels have business affairs departments that would've made sure that all samples were cleared before the song was released, but "Harlem Shake" was on the tiny Mad Decent Records, who had no such resources. It was only after the video for the video went viral with it's crazy dance (if you can call it that) that the song became a hit.

"Harlem Shake" has spent the last 3 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and had over 800,000 downloads, and the video has over 27 million views. All of that has been very recent though, as the song was actually released last May and until the video broke, was destined to be one of the many songs that with little traction in the marketplace.

To a small record label who considers a couple of thousand sales a hit, clearing samples is hardly a priority. Chances are that the sample owner will never hear it, and if they do, there's hardly enough money involved to make a legal case of it. That all changes when the song is a hit however.

It will be interesting to see just how much El Father and Plastic Little settle for. I've known people in the past who know that they're being infringed upon and purposely wait until the song is a big hit before they announce the situation to the world. You get a bigger payday that way.

Regardless, it's just another lesson that if you don't get the proper clearances, it will cost you in the end.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.