A crowd of casual, nondescript white-shirted people hovered near the entrance of the dark-bricked Webster Hall on Tuesday afternoon, taking a break from this summer’s New Music Seminar. Leaning casually against the wrought-iron fence chatting were teenaged singers Christina Grimmie, her long brown hair dyed red, and Charity Vance, a classic Southern sweetheart with blonde hair and green eyes. The two have a combined 1.6 million fans on YouTube.
The New Music Seminar is a festival and conference celebrating new artists. The seminar portion of the event gives producers, writers and musicians including Sean Parker, Wyclef Jean and Andrew WK the opportunity to discuss and learn about the music making process. At night, the young and upcoming stars spread across the city to perform.
For its inaugural effort, the conference brought 150 artists to perform in 17 different venues. It also rounded up four YouTube stars for its main show on Monday night. The headliners were Ms. Grimmie; Ms. Vance; smiley heartthrob Tyler Ward; and the tall, surnameless singer-guitarist Noah.
So what’s it take to be YouTube-famous? Betabeat had the opportunity to chat with each of these four young stars.
Read More
