How to become a famous guitar player using just the internet

I guess the first thing to ask here is this: Do you want to be an e-famous guitar player?

No, you don't.

Every e-famous guitar player you know on the internet gains their e-fame in one of two ways.

1. Dropping a brand name.
2. Playing a cover song.

The most famous guitar player YouTube channels you know of gained their e-fame from one of those two or both.

It is totally true that guitar playing ability has absolutely nothing to do with how e-famous a guitarist is. None at all. It has everything to do with words and phrases that people are searching for, and having YouTube videos found from said specific search words and phrases.

The brand name way

Something you'll notice is that guitar stores grab a lot of YouTube views. Why? Because they have famous brand names of guitars as the titles of videos, and are constantly putting out new videos of guitars people want to hear.

If for example you worked in a guitar store, like Guitar Center, you could probably make several hundred video reviews just from the store's inventory without having to spend a dime - if the manager allowed it, of course.

The cover song way

Easy enough to understand. You post a cover song to YouTube, people search for that song, find your video and you get known that way - assuming your video doesn't get removed by the copyright system YouTube uses.

Does being an e-famous guitar player matter?

No.

Something you'll notice about e-famous guitar players is that whenever they try to sell original songs, it always falls flat. And the reason for that is because that's not what the guitar player crowd wants. They want to hear stuff about reviewing guitars and covering songs. When things stray outside of that, it just doesn't work.

If an e-famous guitar player releases songs, there is flash-in-the-pan sales and then sales drop off a cliff because being an e-famous guitar player never gets you anywhere.

What does get you somewhere is being a topical songwriter.

Topical songwriting defined

I'm sure you've seen some YouTube videos where some guy or some girl posts a song, the song is really stupid, but it gains millions of views real fast.

Some believe it's marketing that makes this happen. That's sometimes true. But other times it's because the guy or girl who posted the song found something topical that a lot of people resonated with, and it struck gold.

Topical basically means "significant to the moment."

Take this awful song for example:

It was released under a year ago and has 2.2 million views. Why not more? Because the song is just that annoying. I can't even make it through the whole thing.

The point however is that the song is topical to the time it was released. The video game Grand Theft Auto V was released on 17 September 2013, and the video was released 28 October 2013 a little under 6 weeks later. At the time, the game was still very hot, so of course it grabbed tons of views.

True, the song is a parody, meaning it's a cover of an already-famous song of the moment. But the entire draw to it is not from the cover but from the topic, that being GTA V.

You do not have to be a gamer in order to get e-famous with a song. The above is just but one example.

All you have to do is keep up with the news, and if you spot a hot-button story that's gaining steam where a lot of people are talking about it right now, you quickly put a song together as fast as you can and release it to YouTube. If you're the early bird that gets the worm, you stand a very good chance of raking in lots of views for the right reason, that being for a song and not as a guitar player.

Again, being an e-famous guitar player gets you nowhere

It's songs that are remembered and not guitar playing ability. You probably don't work in a guitar store, and don't do cover songs since they're yanked from YouTube so easily, so how do you get e-famous? Be a topical songwriter.

The great thing about topical songwriting is that the songs basically write themselves, and all you have to do for a video is make a slideshow.

On a final note, here's a warning. Sometimes topical songs can backfire on you badly. If for example you write a song about something political and/or religious, it can resonate with the audience the wrong way because you tried to be funny, it didn't work and backfired in the worst way possible.

If you go the topical route, yes you can get e-famous quick, but be choosy as to what you write songs about.

Published 2014 Nov 30