Say It's Possible

From an interview with Terra Naomi on The Daily Reel (1/31/07):

When Terra Naomi began uploading installments of her "virtual summer tour" six months ago, she never expected to become an online celebrity. How did a cheap camera and Best Buy tripod lead to a record deal and international renown? All thanks to YouTube.

...in past summers, I would drive myself around and unload my gear, sell my merchandise, load my car back up, get back in the car and drive -- I was putting ten thousand miles on my car over a period of six weeks, and sometimes I would show up and play for twelve people after driving fifteen hours. This year, I figured that it wasn't worth the effort and money that it took, so I just started filming myself and putting my videos up, figuring that a thousand or so people would see them. But Chad Hurley, one of the founders of YouTube, saw my video for the song Say It's Possible. He then sent it to a few people on his staff, and they decided to feature it. It started getting a lot of plays. And then the strange and wonderful thing is that people started covering it. So they were filming their own videos of the song. I think there are over 200 of those. And they pretty much play it exactly like I do, because I was getting hundreds of emails asking me "what are the chords?" So instead of just listing the chords, I made a little video showing them how to play it.

I was contacted by someone from a music magazine in London, and he said "I've seen your videos, and I'd like to send them to some people I know in the business." So he sent them to one person who he thought would be the best match for me as far as a publisher went. And that person was head of Universal Publishing in London.