Lily Allen: MySpace Star International Reaches the Stars Perspectives
single by an up-and-coming artist is nothing new, but what makes Lily Allen’s rise to pop star- dom in the music charts unique is her use of MySpace and the role it played in getting her A noticed by mainstream music media and launching her to fame. Allen was not a complete newbie to the music and arts scene in the UK. She already had some experience singing and performing in some films, and had a record contract with Regal Records, but they were unable to support her album much due to their commitments with other record- ing artists. So Allen used her MySpace page to release and promote demos of her songs, and her site started attracting thousands of listeners. When a music publication noted her growing popularity on MySpace, that at- tracted even more people to her site to download her music. By early 2009, her songs had been downloaded from the site more than 32 million times, and she had nearly five hundred thousand MySpace friends. As a sign of the different dynamics of social media and the complexities that come with stardom in the mainstream, Allen often used her MySpace page to discuss personal issues or criticize her press coverage and even her own behavior. Similarly, when she had a miscarriage in 2008, the page became the hub for countless condolences from fans. In 2009, she stopped making personal blog posts because she felt her words were often getting twisted in the mainstream media. But in early 2010 she started tweeting even as a new pregnancy and marriage kept her from touring. In 2007 her second album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, debuted at num- ber one on the charts in Australia and the UK. Her first album,Alright, Still, has won her numerous awards and sold over 2.6 million copies world- wide. In 2011, in a very traditional media way, her representatives announced that Web Link she was creating a record label, In The Name Of, an imprint of Columbia Records. Lily Allen MySpace page www.myspace.com/lilymusic
it to the Web community for free use, or to provide open access to your project and invite others to work on it and improve on it, as Linus Torvalds did with what be- came the open-source Linux operating system. There have been a number of cases of collaboration extending from the online realm to offline, especially in organizing people around politics or social movements. In fact, the most successful uses of online tools in political campaigns have included ample opportunities for people to socialize in real-world settings as well. This was the lesson learned by the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, from looking at Al Gore’s failed presidential campaign in 2000. Gore’s campaign used online media primarily as another media channel, asking for donations and alerting users about issues and appearances. Dean used online tools to encourage supporters to get together in per- son and act, generating millions of dollars for his campaign in the process. Although Widgets are useful applications created and shared by members Dean eventually dropped out of the presidential race, the lessons learned from that of the public, often for free but campaign were applied to Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. sometimes for a small fee.
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