What made Marie Digby? I’ve heard about her on the radio from time to time, while I do the unnatural act of driving somewhere. Now, I’ve been invited to an event, where the tagline says that she’s “a star born from YouTube”. I had to dig further.
Decided to watch the famous video. Its just her, sitting with her guitar, performing an acoustic version of Rihana’s Umbrella. Nothing fancy. I’m told she sat in front of her MacBook to make the “hit”.
Grassroots marketing? Bands try much harder, and still feel the pain of becoming somewhat famous. What makes her different? Beauty (she’s of Japanese-American heritage)? Sultry look?
I wonder what her tipping point was. She’s had it easy, when you think about it. The Internet has popularised so many good things, and even if you rewind back say fifteen years ago, there is no way an artist would have made it easily, via grassroots events/stunts.
Aren’t you glad you’re part of the free software revolution? If not for Linux (SuSE), Python, MySQL, and lots and lots of disk, you will not be seeing Marie Digby, now will you? And naturally, if not for the ease-of-use of her Apple laptop, and how they’ve become commodity hardware (15 years ago, there were for “graphics professionals” and were sordidly expensive). Times do change.
Maybe I’ll go to the event… if I’m not too jet-lagged (imagine, planning a month in advance to be jet-lagged)…
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