The annoying but semi- catchy song "Friday" by Rebecca Black is a prime example of amateur music at its finest. When the song first went viral in March it became an instant hit for its bad lyrics and terrible vocals. The singer is a 13 year old with mass amounts of autotune helping her sing. Forbes reported that the notoriety of this song is a sign of the power of social media. In less than a month, there have been over 86,000,000 views.
The controversy over this song however, was how it became released. Black filmed the youtube music video at her fathers house and was warned to not expect popularity, just a fun video full of her and her friends as extras.
Similar to the book Remix that we read for lecture, there are legal issues behind the release of this song. The issue of who owns the rights to this song are up in the air, and if the song were sold as ringtones or on websites, who would get all of the profit.
This story reminded me of the introduction of the book which discusses the Stephanie Lenz story. Both cases the people seemed to have rights to their own video, but the end result of "Friday" is unclear.
This new internet hit is just re-creating pop songs by means of professional music tools such as making a music video, a known rapper in the song, and trying to re-create a vocal cords by means of auto-tune. In the end do Hollywood actual stars win, or does the net? Youtube seems to send the message of making anyone an instant star, after all- that is how Justin Beiber was discover so it might be worth a try.
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