Maybe you've heard of Marié Digby, maybe you haven't. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is, she was hailed as a major success because her acoustic cover of "Umbrella" has been seen over 2.3 million times on YouTube and Hollywood Records released news of signing her last week. The only problem? They actually signed her in 2005. And kind of set up the whole YouTube success story. Ooops.
Her cover was featured on the MTV show "The Hills" and Hollywood Records [owned by Disney] sent out press releases that read "Breakthrough YouTube Phenomenon Marié Digby Signs With Hollywood Records."
The Wall Street Journal did some digging and found out this interesting story:
What the release failed to mention is that Hollywood Records signed Ms. Digby in 2005, 18 months before she became a YouTube phenomenon. Hollywood Records helped devise her Internet strategy, consulted with her on the type of songs she chose to post, and distributed a high-quality studio recording of "Umbrella" to iTunes and radio stations.
Oh. I see. Somehow, I don't think the people at Disney/Hollywood wanted that to get out.
The best part is, she's been blogging about how shocked she is that her "little cover" got so big, and her MySpace claims she was on "no" label, even though there is documentation that shows she's been on a major label for over two years now.
I know the target audience for Disney doesn't care all that much about credibility, or honesty, or authentic musicianship -- but isn't this taking things a bit far?
Both the singer and the label insist they did nothing wrong. After all, what's wrong with generating buzz? And since the singer claims she "didn't feel like it [being signed to a major label] was something that was going to make people like me," there's no reason why she shouldn't have lied and pretended she was just some girl with a guitar and some talent, right?
Hollywood Records encouraged her to post other covers, using the logic that people would be searching for the original artists, rather than the unknown Marié Digby. Then they recorded her cover of "Umbrella," and released it to iTunes and radio -- managing to pull the wool over the eyes of radio stations and television shows. Radio stations heralded her as having been "found on the Internet" and Carson Daly claimed to have found her on the Internet as well. Are they faking? Were they bought out? Who knows? Either way, everyone involved looks stupid and anything that ever comes out of the mouth of Marié Digby will henceforth be questioned. Is it a lie?
After all, here's what she said to Carson Daly:
I just did this YouTube video two months ago and never, ever imagined that it would actually get me on TV or radio or anything like that," she said. "I just did it in my living room and it blew up first on YouTube and then I guess it got to Star 98.7 and then Carson Daly found me so that's why I'm here."
By the way, since when does Carson Daly book random YouTube artists? I don't believe for one second he wasn't in on the whole thing.
It amuses me endlessly that record labels are resorting to such cheap tricks to try and promote their artists -- and having them ultimately look like complete and total morons when the truth comes out. And in this day and age, you have to be amazingly powerful to keep your secrets from the prying eyes of the press, who pay attention to every tiny detail and search every document they can for something, anything, of a story.
By the way, here's this chick's YouTube page.
You know what? She's not horrible, but she's nothing special. I can't believe it took this long for anyone to question why the hell she was on TV or radio to begin with.
I predict a flop for her. As stupid as I generally regard the populace, let's face it -- they don't like feeling stupid, and anyone who bought into her humble little story and wanted to support this hard-working girl probably feels pretty stupid knowing they got suckered by a "clever viral campaign" deisgned by a major label.
