The first-ever You Tube Music Awards on Sunday, improvised with plenty of celebrity cameos thrown into the mix, saw awards going to rapper Eminem and hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
The show made a clear bid for the quirky, a benefit of being streamed by You Tube rather than broadcast on television.
If the music itself sometimes felt a little overshadowed by all the hoopla, it should not surprise. The show was also a sort of announcement by You Tube of its intentions to take a bigger role in the music industry.
The music awards market is almost as crowded as the music market. You Tube featured big stars such as Lady Gaga to attract attention, while keeping enough of an outsider perspective to differentiate itself from MTV, the Grammys and other music powerhouses.
Although the Google-owned site has for years been a go-to place for music fans around the world, the site is now expected to introduce a paid music service by year-end.
“There was nothing scripted tonight,” said actor Jason Schwartzman, who, along with performance artiste Reggie Watts, hosted the show, which was directed by Spike Jonze.
The music awards market is almost as crowded as the music market
Eminem won the Artist of the Year award. Video of the Year was awarded to Girls’ Generation, who are megastars in South Korea but are still making inroads into the US music scene.
Breakthrough of the Year went to hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, whose songs include the gay rights anthem, Same Love.
Walk off the Earth, along with KRNFX, took the Phenomenon Award for their version of Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble, while the Innovation Prize went to DeStorm, who won for See Me Standing.
And in an acknowledgement of the hefty amount of user-generated content that goes on You Tube – everything from yawning kittens to cellphone video of major world news – You Tube gave out something called Response of the Year.
That prize went to Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix, for their cover of Imagine Dragons’ Radioactive. Stirling is a star among violinists – but not have the star power of Katy Perry, another of the night’s nominees.
You Tube has positioned itself in recent years as a major source of new music videos for fans. Sites such as You Tube effectively function as on-demand stations for music, with fans able to listen to play lists over and over just for watching the occasional commercial.
The shift highlights some of the challenges – and opportunities – for artists. Access to music is easier than it is ever been, thanks to sites such as You Tube, music blogs and file-sharing software. But it has also become much more difficult for musicians to earn a living.