The success recipe is simple and easy to understand.
Just over five years ago a girl at the age of eleven was recording a song on her family 1 billion email list and sent it to a talent show. It didn’t take long before the tune was on top of the ring-tone lists. Before world stars such as Timberland and Britney Spears.
The owner of the song explains that the success of the song is easy to understand.
– It sticks to the brain and is easy to remember. Kokobom is a fairly simple word.
Just a few years ago it would have been impossible for a 13-year-old from a small town with virtually no marketing budget to sell more than U.S. mega stars. Today, it is possible because of cheap distribution and promotional channels on the Internet such as MySpace and YouTube.
– We thought about how we could help the song to come out and get noticed. After a lot of brainstorming we figured that we wanted to do a video that was fun and included dancing. A typical music video would cost too much .
“The solution was a website where the visitors themselves were invited to submit a Kokobom dance video. The clips are posted on YouTube and on Kokoboms website. All good songs should have their own dance” it says on the kokobom website.
Within hip-hop and Jamaican Dance-hall, there is a long tradition of songs with their own dances. With YouTube’s success it has been a phenomenon of increased exposure in recent years. Artist looking to develop dances for potential hits. They put up an instructional video on the internet and keep their fingers crossed that listeners will record and distribute their own dance videos for the song.
One that has just done that is the U.S. First Soulful Boy. His song “Crank That (Soulful Boy)” was delivered in a finished hit package with a choreographed dance instruction video on the web.
– YouTube has been everything to him. It is his main distributor, “says Emil Davidson, music journalist living in New York.
Even ring-tones works great in hip hop. Too good according to some critics who argue that some young artists only are interested in investing in it and make songs that only works as ringtones. Production and texts is simple and as short as possible just to be able to cut it down to a mobile phone ringtone.
– There are certainly artists who adapt their music for ring-tones. “It is the only market that sells,” says Emil Davidson.
– In the United States, radio has always been important, there is a long tradition of adapting the songs after the bad sound system. The music will sound good and is easily recognisable even if it is played on a broken car stereo or on a mobile.
