It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday...

Remember, I'm linked to Ice Cube on the Barnes and Noble search for 'Injected.' Gotta give props to my g's out there, hustlin' everyday.

Was totally going to write about some fabulous aspect of something or another, but my beautiful wife woke me this morning singing the viral sensation, "Friday," by 13-year-old Rebecca Black.

(I used some not-so-happy words.)

This got me to doing some research to find out what the deal was with the song, which ultimately led me to an LA Times article [which was a report of Black's Good Morning America spot]. Apparently the massively popular video, with 162,370,212 views as of the time of this writing on YouTube, was a part of Black's Ark Music Factory package. Her mother purchased a $4000 album/video/promotional package for her daughter, and look what's happened now.

Rebecca Black, infamous internet star, from her Ark Music Factory profile page.

From the power of the internet, this unknown girl with her awful, auto-tuned (and yet, delightfully, horribly catchy- "It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday" is stuck in my head...still) song has absolutely blown up as a one-hit-wonder. At some point a long time ago, Black was making $24,000 a week on downloads, and that was a mere 36,000,000 views ago.

I'm sure the girl and her mother have made back the initial $4000 investment, which was probably a mother paying her daughter's way into music fame, but most of the publicity has been negative, with the song being listed as "Worst song ever" by a multitude of sites, although celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon, with the Jonas Brothers, Katy Perry, and yes, even Justin Bieber covering the song in concert. As a commercial success, the auto-tuned horror peaked at #58 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., not to mention similar rankings on Canadian, Australian, and U.K. Billboard charts.

Why am I so interested in this terrible, terrible song?

In part, this girl has been successful doing virtually the same thing I'm attempting to do with my writing. She's not technically "self-publishing," as she paid someone to give her an idea, record and distribute her work. She didn't even write the song herself, as the writer explained the impetus for the wonder of "It's Friday" in an interview:

"I wrote the lyrics on a Thursday night going into a Friday," he said. "I was writing different songs all night and was like, 'Wow, I've been up a long time and it's Friday.' And I was like, wow, it is Friday!" (from Gawker,com)

So. I spent MONTHS writing, editing, rewriting, formatting, publishing, and distributing my works on my own (and with the help of my fabulous, beautiful wife!), while this girl paid $4000 bucks and has raked in the cash. (We've sold about 40 books thus far. At 0.99 cents. I think we've made a little over $5.00.)

Maybe the next venture for west|publishing will be an equally terrible YouTube video and song. I'm thinking, "Crap, It's Monday," or "Puppies and Kittens are Cute."
 

'Puppies and Kittens are Cute,' by C. Dub (my rapping stage name, from my mentor, Ice Cube.)

Enjoy the ride! (and look for 'Puppies and Kittens are Cute' on iTunes and YouTube, coming soon!)