As a song, "Here It Goes Again" is a footnote. But as a marketing stunt, it's a milestone - a harbinger of a world where fame and fortune are measured in views, likes and shares, not record sales, radio airplay or downloads. Released online roughly a year prior to the introduction of Apple's iPhone, the philosopher's stone of the social media age, "Here It Goes Again" unleashed the power of viral video to chart a new path to celebrity, vividly demonstrating digital media's unprecedented capacity to establish more direct connections between performers and audiences while disintermediating labels and broadcasters from the star-maker machinery.
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