You Too Can Be Janet Jackson

The world, mostly, is staying the same size as far as volume and weight. Various space debris such as dust and meteorites which burn up in the atmosphere do add small bits of weight but nothing worth noting. Despite that the advancements in technology, specifically communications technology, have given us the feeling our world is growing smaller. Many people are concerned by our rapid growth and feel soon we will outgrow or just damage our home.

            Personally I figure the sooner we use up this ball of dirt the sooner we’ll be forced to get along and move off of it. Mars is looking like a prime spot for future developments to me. The once we move on to other planets and moons we can get back to hating each other and trying to blow each other up. The point in all of this isn’t space colonization though (That’s a blog for a different day).

            Really my point is that TV has for years lied to us but now it can make good on the promises. We have all grown-up believing that we can all be super famous Rock/ Movie/Sports Stars. We all dream that one day our names will in lights and that we’ll be worshiped by faithful fans. In the past these dreams were mostly heart break.

Let’s look at realities of these dreams today. First forget being Brittny Spears or the Beatles, forget being Matt Damon or Angelina Jolie. Maybe aim for something just a little lower. How about settling for Janet Jackson or Matt Dillon?

Janet Jackson has never had a number one record, she has however had many gold and platnum records. What does a platnum record mean. Well in US markets it means selling 500,000 records or singles for Gold and 1,000,000 for platnum. In some countires though a Gold Record can be as little 2,500 records sold in that country although 10,000 is the avarage. The internet, the news industry and satalite TV and Radio now make it possible to get thoes numbers and still be unknown.

The world’s population is 6.54 Billion. Let that sink in. 6,544,000,000 that is a very big number. Lets say you put up a website and sell your songs for $0.50 each. This is a nice low price, very reasonable really. Lets say that you also put videos of yourself on Youtube playing the songs. Lets say that in a a single day after about a year of doing this you have a total of 50 views of each of your 20 songs on youtube and 1000 hits to your webpage. This is 2000 times a day people are noticing you, lets estimate that only 10% of that visiter so you are noticed by 200 people per day. Lets say that only 10% of these people return to your site so we now have 20 people per day who have real interest in you and your music.

Every week 20 more people become “fans” of your music. In one year that is 1040 fans. Once you have fans they tell other people so for fun lets say that each week you gain one fan more then the week before, I think this is still reasonable and low enough to have you unnoticed by the world at large and it would result in a total of  2418 fans in one year. Now this number can only increase once you get Boing-Boinged and other things. If you ever become a Youtube featured artist then you can tripple the number easily. So we’ll say that at the end of year two you have a total of 8463 fans.

Lets say that half of the fans have gotten tired of only listening to the 30 second sample tracks from your site and they can’t figure out how to download or copy your LQ youtube vids so they actually buy songs. So you sell songs to 4231 fans (we’ll round the ½ a fan down) say they on avarage buy 4 of your 20 songs, besids making $8462.00 your most popular song is going to sell 2,500 coppies or more. If you were in Hungary that would be a gold record.

Sure it’s not quite like being Janet Jackson really but it still makes you more popular of a singer then that smug guy with the new Corvette in the next cube over. That is something that Janet Jackson will never understand. The examples listed are not just my fantasys though, many new web artists are emerging everyday. Two prime examples are Jonathan Coulton (http://www.jonathancoulton.com) and Terra Naomi (http://www.terranaomi.com). Jonathan Coulton has been mentioned and played on the Daily Show (Thanks to his involvement with John Hodgeman, the Daily Show resident expert) and has been part of some amazing projects like a Second Life Concert (http://www.secondlife.com). Terra Naomi for quite a while was the most subscribed musician at Youtube and has just had a song included on the soundtrack for reient Indie Movie Sherrybaby (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423169/) with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Both of the artists also perform live shows and sell CD’s also. It’s a way to make a living and it can be fun.

Musicians aren’t the only artists who can make it big on the internet. A blogger from Iraq (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ ) has had her blog turned into a book and has been featured on cable news networks many times. Lonleygirl15 (http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=lonelygirl15) has become an internet sensation and even though the “Character” of Bree the 17 year old home schooled girl has been unmasked the actress who plays her, Jessica Rose, is still a world wide celebrity now. Another Youtube start, Brookers (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Brookers) was discovered and signed to a contract by Carson Daly of TRL fame.

So there you have it with less then 1% of 1% of the world population as your fans you could be “famous”. If you have talent or just think you do why not show it to the world, maybe you’ll make a few bucks but even if you don’t you might just be adored by a handful of fans. As for the dreams of being a sports fan…well the internet can’t help you there yet.