If you were to go on the myspace page of Timbaland, Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake, they all have +100,000 friends. You could, as an observer, jump to conclusions and say to yourself, ‘Wow, that artist has a lot of fans,’ but how sure are you that all of those friends are considered fans?
…exactly.
Over the past couple of years I’ve witnessed a specific cycle of how an artist starts as a nobody to an average person’s fantasy. It doesn’t matter how good/bad they are, they will always have people who love them and people who really hate them. As ridiculous as it sounds, artists praise their haters. If it wasn’t for haters Britney Spears wouldn’t have had a reason to shave her head, become psychotic, record Gimme More, and have a desperate fan of hers record the most popular video on You Tube:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc
Yep…thanks haters 🙂
There’s a very simple process that brings an artist from shame to fame!
A new artist (unsigned) releases a few songs on their myspace or website. A group of people come across the site and hear the songs; a couple people like it, a few hate it. The people who love it tell there friends to check it out (in a positive manner); and the people who hate it tell their friends to check it out (in a joking manner). More people go to the site–some people love it, some people hate it–and the process continues. Over time the population of lovers and haters will grow rapidly. So whenever you come across an artists page–no matter how famous they are, or whatever the magazines say about them–be sure to believe half of what you hear and a quarter of what you see.