Click, click, boom: Aspiring artists find fame as viral musicians

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Andy McKee

FRESNO, Calif.—He didn’t think it was going to take off the way it did.

That’s what Andy McKee says. That’s what they all say.

No more than 14 months ago, Andy McKee was the kind of musician you’d find in most every city in America. He was a guy with a dream. And it was a simple dream really.

“All I’ve ever said, since I was 14 years old, is that if I can make a living playing guitar, that’s all I need,” McKee says, from his home in Topeka, Kan. “I don’t need a mansion or anything.”

Then his little world of giving guitar lessons and playing his own finger-picking gigs ran into a Goliath named YouTube.

Nearly 30 million views later, McKee has found fame—and his dream—as a viral musician.

That same forward-this-to-everyone-you-know Web-surfing mentality has helped bring about a new type of music celebrity, the musician who can do something extraordinary with an instrument, video it and then put it on the Web for millions to watch and comment.

It got McKee onto the front page of YouTube and earned him the title of the No. 1 artist on YouTube—all thanks to his most notable video, “Drifting” a three-minute instrumental song that has amassed more than 10 million views.

Just a little context on McKee’s views: In the 2007 Neilsen BDS reports released last week, the highest number of music video stream was 23 million (Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”).

McKee’s total—though beginning in mid-November 2006—would put him between Justin Timberlake and Shakira on those Neilsen charts.

“I’m playing the guitar in sort of an unusual way,” McKee says, asked to explain his rash online success. “That has an appeal to people who had never seen the guitar played that way. And, maybe. the music wasn’t half bad too.”

Ah, yes, the quality of the music. This is where the viral musician differs from the Internet sensation—another viral wonder, but one spiked with humor instead of virtuosity.

Thirteen million people may have watched Tay Zonday sing the quirky “Chocolate Rain” this year, but a viral musician he isn’t. He’s more akin to the William Hung’s of the world.

Zonday was able to spin his odd voice and Internet fame into a Dr Pepper commercial. McKee, meanwhile, turned the momentum behind “Drifting” into some national touring, late-night TV appearances and big guest spot.

Vocalist Josh Groban saw McKee’s work on YouTube and recruited McKee to play on “Noel,” the Christmas album Groban released in October. With 3.69 million copies sold, “Noel” was the best-selling album of 2007.

“I think there’s been a void in what the music labels are releasing as far as the talent levels are concerned,” McKee says. “There are people who can sing or dance, but how many people are writing or creating their own music? That’s why all these musicians are taking off on the Internet.”

Another of those is David Sides, a 23-year-old piano player who is a recent graduate of the University of California, Riverside. As a teenager, he gained the nickname “Piano Man” because of his knack for listening to popular songs and replaying piano versions by ear.

Friends would often ask him to come to their houses and play their pianos. Nowadays, thanks to a different type of word of mouth, he’s one of the more popular artists on YouTube.

Sides’ shtick is taking popular hip-hop and R&B songs and giving them a classical piano feel. “Mozart gone hip-hop,” he calls it.

For a couple years, Sides says, a friend was urging him to record himself and put the videos on YouTube. Sides was skeptical at first, but eventually decided, “Maybe I should do that.” In April, he put up videos of his piano versions of hit such as Sean Paul’s “We Be Burnin’” and Fat Joe’s “Make It Rain.”

He has released 35 videos to YouTube with seven of them topping one million hits. His most popular thus far is a rendition of One Republic’s “Apologize,” which has gotten 2.2 million views since Nov. 7.

“It’s definitely a good feeling to know that people are appreciating it,” Sides says. “When I first put the songs up, I didn’t really know how people would receive them. I know the persona of the piano is mostly classical and jazz. Me playing tunes like hip-hop has opened peoples’ eyes. I get so many messages from people like “I love what you do, I’m taking piano lessons now. It’s all exposure—exposing people to what they can do with these instruments.”

Like McKee’s videos, Sides’ are simple. Just him sitting at the piano playing. There’s no flash. The music sells itself.

“Music today has changed,” Sides says. “You hear more catchy hooks and poppy tunes. A lot of times the people who make this music aren’t really playing the instruments. The actual idea of musicianship has dwindled. Exposing kids to these instruments is very important to music.”

Along those same lines, local musician David Hull had his own brush with viral fame in October, when his video “Mozart A La Bass Guitar” became a hit on MySpace.

In the video, Hull, who plays in the local band Flywright, plays signature Mozart on his bass. It was a technique he worked on for four years before recording. The video sat for a while, collecting hits here and there. It wasn’t until he sent an e-mail to someone at MySpace with a link to the video that it made the featured videos page.

Then the views came quick—200,000 in a day. He peaked at No. 3 on the MySpace daily charts. Other video of Hull’s started doing well, too.

A few months later, he still feels the effects of his couple of days of viral fame.

“It’s brought a lot of traffic to my Web site,” Hull says. “I’ve sold many a transcription of that piece. I’ve had quite a few sales on iTunes for the band and my solo stuff. In making the video I hadn’t really planned on doing that, but it was really cool.”

And he’s still getting views and comments to this day. A recent one said, “This is one of the most amazing things I think I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s really cool to get hundreds of thousands of views in a day,” Hull says. “But I’m really happy it’s thousands of views a day still today.”