Artists Who Rose to Fame from YouTube and Vine
This article is about nine artists who rose to fame from being discovered on YouTube and an app called Vine. The nine artists and groups featured are Arnel Pineda, Shawn Mendes, Us the Duo, Cody Simpson, The Weeknd, Austin Mahone, Grayson Chance, Karmin, and 5 Seconds of Summer. Under every artists mentioned in this article, Regalado gives a short piece about the artist or group and how they gained popularity.
Arnel Pienda is an artist from the Philippines who is a part of a band called the Zoo. He began singing in the 80’s and 90’s but did not really begin to make a name for himself until 2007 when he posted covers of songs from famous bands such as Journey and Aerosmith and posted them on YouTube. His work has definitely paid off as he became the new lead singer of Journey.
The next artist Regalado features is Shawn Mendes. Shawn Mendes rose to fame off of the six second app called vine. He sang covers of Justin Bieber songs and gained thousands of followers and had many loops on his vine cover of the song “As Long As You Love Me”. Regalado mentions that five major record labels, Warner Brothers, Sony records, Republic records, Atlantic Records, and Island Records reached out to Mendes all in a same short period of time. He is now going to open for Taylor swift on a great number of her concerts for her 1989 tour. He has become wildly successful reaching number one on iTunes with The Shawn Mendes EP and gaining millions of followers on Vine, Twitter, and Facebook.
Us the Duo is another group that has become famous off of vine. This duo is a husband and wife couple who also sang six second covers of songs and were very successful in gaining views and followers, 1.5 million to be exact and the number of followers continues to rise. The couple ended up signing with Republic records and had appearances on Good Morning America and the Today Show.
Cody Simpson, perhaps one of the best known artist featured was discovered on YouTube. He had millions of views of his covers of songs from other famous musicians like Justin Timberlake. He has had a very successful career signing with Atlantic Records, being a part of the show, Dancing With The Stars and even scoring the supermodel Gigi Hadid and featuring her in one of his music videos (however they are no longer together). He also parted ways with Atlantic Records and is also pursuing a career in acting; Simpson has also been successful in acting to as he got a guest role in the television show Cougar Town.
Another very well-known artist mentioned is The Weeknd. Regalado mentions that The Weeknd began to gain popularity in 2010 after posting videos onto YouTube. Since then, he signed with Republic records and has blown up even having his songs featured in movies such as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay and Fifty Shades of Grey. A few more artists are featured in a similar format in the rest of this article. A major theme and similarity seen throughout most, if not all, of the artists featured in this article is the fact that what made them famous are the covers that they posted of songs from artists who already well known. Regalado did a good job with illustrations of the musicians and did a great job giving short but very informing sections of the artists and how they gained and are gaining popularity.
