Rolling Stone story: Genero.TV and fan-sourced music videos

Here’s my second story for Rolling Stone, from the December 2009 issue. It’s 600 words on an Australian website called Genero.TV, which allows fans to create music videos for bands for a chance to become their official video, and win $4000. The article was illustrated by Simon Noynay.

Story below - click for full-sized version.

Here’s my original pitch, sent September 1 2009.

Crowdsourcing Fan Creativity
In August 2009, a service called Genero.TV launched a business model that allows fans to create music videos for artists. This is how it works: artists contribute the songs and upload them for the fans; the fans create the videos and upload them to Genero.tv; then the world watches, votes and spreads the word.

They’ve just released their first round of 16 artists and songs, which each feature different prizes. The overall prize for this round is US$4000, which will be awarded to the director of one of the 16 final videos. As I understand it, videos submissions are judged by the bands and Genero.tv, and all of the winning videos will become the artists’ official video for that song.

Of the 16 artists, such as UNKLE, Easy Star All-Stars and Casiokids, 6 are Australian:

• The Temper Trap
• Bliss N Eso
• Birds Of Tokyo
• True Live
• Hermitude
• Mirror House Antics

Cool idea. Let’s take a closer look.

• Who’s behind Genero.TV? I can’t find any info on their personnel or the country where they’re based.
• Who funds the site?
• What kind of licensing is required for this kind of business model?
• Who’s funding this business model?
• Why did these Australian acts decide to jump on board?
• What are the acts’ expectations of the quality of submissions?
• What’s the value of the music video in 2009? (I’ll speak to some Australian acts who’ve had viral video ’success’, to determine the outcomes)
• Is this just a way for lazy bands to turn creative control over to their fans for cheap, or is it a genius idea to shorten the distance between artists and their fans?

Coincidentally, Sneaky Sound System last week announced the winner of a $10,000 fan-sourced music video competition that they ran through their website. They’d provide a good supplementary viewpoint to this article.

As with my first Rolling Stone story on streaming music subscription services, the interviews I conducted far exceeded the article’s word limit. Check back for outtakes from these articles here soon.

test Filed under Published Writing | Tags: article, australia, creativity, crowd-sourcing, fan-sourced, freelance-writing, genero-tv, music-videos, pitch, rolling stone, Writing |