08 Sep Viral loneliness – update

Tanya Davis

Sandbar Music of Charlottetown, PEI, has released a soundtrack MP3 of  the hit YouTube video, How To Be Alone.

Tanya Davis wrote and performed the poetry and music at the heart of the piece; Andrea Dorfman directed the film, which had been viewed just over 600 times when featured here July 30. (Find a partial account of its viral progress toward the current 1.4 million hits here.)

It’s plain that, aside from one crankypants Globe and Mail reviewer, lots of people want to hear music and poetry like Davis’s, and see moving pictures like Dorfman’s. The traditional distribution paradigm had little use for such artists, but in the Internet age, they — and we — have a chance to encounter one another. Once we were lonely, but now we have the long tail.

Sandbar Music, “the little music company that could,” is an interesting outfit that’s trying to nudge that process along, giving artists like Davis a way to —forgive the phrase — monetize their work.

Andrea Dorfman

You can download the How To Be Alone MP3 for just 99¢, and I urge you to do so. As Davis points out, “That’s less than a dollar.”

If you’re near Sydney on November 4, you can view the video on the big screen at the annual Cape Breton Island Film Series benefit for L’Arche Cape Breton. I urge you to do that, too. It will show with the feature film Babies, followed by a musical party and Lebanese buffet. We hope Dorfman and perhaps even Davis will be on hand.

You can sample and buy lots of several indie artists’ music on the Sandbar site, including a newly completed album by Davis.