Had she not left the label, Grannis might have been a household name by now, but her work might also have been altered to sound like something Grannis isn’t. Despite leaving the label, Grannis has developed quite a following on YouTube. Her videos have received nearly 80 million views to date. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out her video for “In Your Arms.” Seriously, it deserves to be watched. Not convinced? Here are some numbers about what went into the video:

• 22 months (1,357 hours of work)
• 30 people
• 1 still camera
• 288,000 jelly beans

The video had earned a seemingly huge one million views just three days after its initial release on YouTube. However, unlike Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video, the attention on Grannis’ video is already dying down, which is a real shame. It’s easy to imagine that if this video had been a cover-of-Billboard top 100 hit, it would have more views right now. Though Grannis has gained moderate popularity through YouTube, her original songs do not attract a large enough audience to give “In Your Arms” the attention it deserves.

I give Grannis and her team some major kudos for this video, but almost wish that some mainstream artist was featured in this video, so it would garner more views, to make the effort that went into it worth it. Frankly, the track “In Your Arms” by itself is nothing special. After watching the video, I was left thinking about jelly beans instead of about the song’s melody or chorus. That’s both a credit to the video and a discredit to the music. Both “Message From Your Heart” and “In Your Arms” are singles from Grannis’ 2010 album Stairwells. On the whole, Stairwells is a quite “friendly” album. One might even call it a female Jack Johnson-esque sound. It’s nice. However, just “nice” doesn’t quite make the cut. I’ll keep checking in on the videos that Grannis posts on YouTube, but I think I’ll leave the album on the shelves from now on.

We spoke briefly about recording music, about performing live music, and about getting good sound out of the gear you have. It was funny to me that we both prefer the Shure SM57 to the SM58 for vocals even though the 58 is renowned as the top-dog when it comes to vocals. Call me crazy, but the SM58 sounds like you’re singing through a down pillow.

At any rate, we talked about how record companies nowadays don’t like to take big risks with their talent. You see it all the time – pop hits like Justin Bieber get the big push while artists with real talent need to make sure that they’re at least covering the investment made in them. That’s not to say that truly great artists don’t break out – they do, but when they don’t it’s not for a lack of effort and thirst. Another thing Mr. Power mentioned to me was his belief that the process of creating music has become demystified by the advent of simple music creation apps on computers, smartphones and tablets alike. To him, this has devalued the process of creating music and has, in turn, devalued music as a whole.

While I can see Mr. Power’s point and concede at least some validity to his claims, I couldn’t help but look on the flip side of that coin. In many ways, at least in my own experience, the fact that music creation is so much more accessible now than it was just a short five years ago has created more interest in the process and has shown people that while yes, one can make a full album using nothing but a computer and a USB microphone, it doesn’t sound nearly as polished and pleasant without the talented ears of a sound engineer using professional-grade equipment. If anything, I believe that these tools have created even more value in the music creation process.

I may be in the minority, however, as we know that people are not the brightest of the Earth’s creations and often times don’t see the forest for the trees. Many may look at their YouTube videos as masterpieces and never understand the value in proper equipment. It is my opinion, though, that these people never saw value in it in the first place.

“Hey, hey, I wanna be a rock star.”

This is the main line of Nickelback’s 2008 hit single “Rockstar” off their album All the Right Reasons. The song, which has been said to be a satirical piece about the excess of the rock and roll lifestyle, which pokes fun at the notion of musicians who want the fame and fortune, but who lack artistic integrity, is simply a lame-duck attempt at giving Nickelback any shred of musical credibility. This can all be confirmed in the hypocrisy of the line “I want a brand new house on an episode of Cribs,” which was supposed to be pointing the finger at the kinds of people who appear on the MTV show. Instead, it shined a bright light on the lack of integrity the group has, as frontman Chad Kroeger appeared on the show, showing off his mansion.

Nickelback’s success rests not on the shoulders of musicianship or great artistic ability, or the notion that the songs that they write are interesting or unique. Instead, their success rests solely on their ability to churn out cookie-cutter rock songs that appeal to the unthinking majority and the post-music-video MTV generation. An old favorite and popular example of this is this YouTube video, which mashes together “How You Remind Me” and “Someday.” While some editing was done to make sure the songs were exactly the same length, the takeaway from this is that Nickelback, instead of crafting interesting songs with differing structure, relies upon the tried and true verse-chorus-verse structure that gets most artists to the dance as the songs are considered “radio friendly.”

Screw that noise. I can understand liking Nickelback’s music – I take no offense to someone saying that they enjoy listening to “Someday” or “Photograph.” What I take offense to is the idea that Nickelback somehow is a great rock band. They’re not. They’re great at making radio hits that appeal to a generation that forgot (or never knew how) to rock.

VEVO is a partnership between the Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and the Abu Dhabi Media Company. Artists working within any of these music companies have their music videos exclusively featured on VEVO. Other companies including EMI Music, ABKCO, Beggars Group, Big Machine Records, Concord Music Group, Hollywood Records, Lyric Street Records, Walt Disney Records, and CBS Interactive Music Group, among many more, almost use VEVO to distribute their videos.

Basically, it seems like VEVO is a way for these big music companies to get their music out without it “just” being on Youtube. It is their way of making sure that their music and video gets onto the Web in a controlled manner, without some random person posting it. This is something I’m actually completely okay with too, because the videos are of high, or what they call “premium” quality, without any extra hassle on Youtube. In fact, VEVO reduces the chance that I’ll stumble upon a fake video and waste time looking for the artist’s legitimate music video.

Youtube is great, but it can be overwhelming if you’re not interested in the comedies and other videos that people have posted. If you look for videos directly through VEVO, instead of Youtube, you can guarantee that you will be getting only top quality music videos. You can even make a playlist of these videos, just like on Youtube. It’s like your own personal MTV channel, or at least what MTV was like in the past. In addition to that, I especially like the layout of VEVO, and actually find it more appealing than Youtube, especially when trying to find an artist by genre.

Thus, if you are purely interested in watching new music videos streamed in high quality, VEVO is superb and more apt to help you find what you are seeking.

It was a highly anticipated video– especially because it featured Beyonce. “Telephone” is the second single taken from Lady Gaga’s latest album The Fame Monster. A few days after the video came out, Billboard announced that “Telephone” had reached number one on the pop chart. Once that happened, “Telephone” became Lady Gaga’s sixth consecutive number one on the chart. Believe it or not, but she is the only artist in history ever to do this. I was extremely surprised to learn of this fact, mostly because considering that it is 2010, you would assume that at least one other person had done this before her.

The video is directed by Jonas Akerlund, a Swedish film and music video director who is best known for his music videos that are pretty much movie trailers or short films. He is famous for his video for Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” which won a Grammy for Best Music Video. This video features and displays all that is the Haus of Gaga–Lady Gaga’s creative team that collaborates with her on her clothing, stage sets, and sounds.

It is nine and a half minutes long and has attracted over 18 million viewers. The video created a lot of buzz and probably deserves a PG-13 or higher rating.It is a little ridiculous, but then again, people accept it because, well, “It’s Gaga.” Some describe the video as edgy, sexy, and refreshing, while others dislike the video because they think it’s just plain weird. CNN even claimed that MTV banned the video due to its sexual content. If you have not already seen it, you are in for a treat. For instance, in the beginning of the video, Gaga is practically stripped naked in a prison cell before she leaps onto the bars, exposing herself in a way that references a rumor about her genitalia.

Yeah… and that is just the beginning of the video.  To read more details about the whole video, read this review of it.

This video was created after the band played a memorial gig for a friend who passed away, and it got them thinking. Why not create a video to go along with the theme of this great tune, “Under Pressure”, originally performed by Queen and David Bowie?

Credit goes to guitarist John Whitcore who suggested submitting the video to Avid Technology’s video contest and donating the winnings to a local charity or shelter.  They also wanted to get their kids to understand and get involved, so they ended up doing their part by being our on-camera talent.

Steve Centorino explained, “We thought the message was timely.  If we can get people to at least think about it, then we’ve accomplished something.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

STS  is:  Steve Centorino, Joe Calbro, Dana Ruzicka and John Whitcore.