Jason Andrews midterm presentation on Soulja Boy

My presentation was on Soulja Boy and his influence on the music industry and self promotion using new media in the web 2.0 generation.

Soldier Boy Background

• DeAndre Cortez Way, born in 1990, would emerge 17 years later as the artist we all know as Soulja Boy.

• While most rappers try to break into the music business by recording mix tapes, performing at shows, and trying to get signed, Soulja Boy pioneered a new way for rappers and musical artists alike to bring their music to fans worldwide.

• In 2005, Soulja Boy posted his songs on the video-based social community YouTube. Following positive reviews and comments from the site, Way established his own pages on YouTube and MySpace.

• In May 2007, Soulja Boy posted his newest song, entitled “Crank Dat”.

• Soulja boy quickly became a known name and fan responses to the video, and the Crank Dat dance rapidly spread across the world.

• Within the video, you can see footage of all of the fan video responses to his song.

• In September 2007, his single "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Initially self-published on the Internet, it became a number-one hit in the United States for seven non-consecutive weeks starting that September.

• A lot of the success if not all can be credited to the enormous response that was seen to his initial posting of “Crank Dat” on you tube.

• Thanks largely to YouTube, “Crank That,” the song and dance, have been ubiquitous for the past three months. Since it was posted in August of 2007, the instructional clip featuring Soulja Boy doing the moves has been viewed on YouTube more than 11 million times. Video variations of the song, including manipulated Winnie the Pooh, Barney, and Dora the Explorer cartoons, have also become Internet hits.

• For the 50th Grammy Awards, Soulja Boy was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song with "Crank That (Soulja Boy)". He lost to Kanye West's and T-Pain's "Good Life”.

Impact of “Crank Dat”

• Hitwise an online competitive intelligence service provides daily insights on how 25 million people interact with over 1 million websites in more than 160 industries.

• At his debut Hitwise charted the Soulja Boy boom by tracking the amount of traffic streaming from social networking sites to search engines to his official Web site, and predicted in May of 2007 that the rapper (who was virtually unknown at the time) would become a major mainstream success

• Soulja's marketing attack on the Web showed that reality music parallels the success of reality television: "I was making beats and songs from the bedroom of my house, uploading them to MySpace," he says.

• That's when multi-platinum producer Mr. Collipark took notice.

• Now following tours with young rap sensations Bow Wow and Chris Brown, Soulja Boy is designing his own line of Yums sneakers and apparel, buying Atlanta club Excalibur, setting up record label S.O.D Money Gang Entertainment through Universal and being featured in a custom Soulja Boy cartoon to be released through iTunes and YouTube.

Effects on new media

• Other Examples Bo Burnham (singing comedian) signed released first CD. On Carson Daily Late Late Night

• ESPN’s coverage of man soliciting his son (Marquise Walker) as the top kindergarten prospect.

o Marquise preformed half time shows at the Memphis Grizzlies. All in hope to get a jump on college recruiting.

o http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/marquise