![]() HARLEM SHAKE POOP EDITION REAL SKINOn January 30th, 2013, “Filthy Frank”, the YouTube persona of a 19 year old Communication major in New York, uploaded a new video titled “FILTHY COMPILATION #6 – SMELL MY FINGERS.” The video began with a 19 second clip of Filthy Frank and three friends, all dressed in skin tight spandex body suits, dancing to Baauer’s Harlem Shake.Ī few days later, a group of Australian high school students (known on YouTube as TheSunn圜oastSkate) uploaded “The Harlem Shake v1 (TSCS original)”. ![]() HARLEM SHAKE POOP EDITION REAL DOWNLOADReleased as a free download by the label “Mad Decent,” the song was well received within it is genre Pitchfork awarded it “Best New Track”, describing it as having “an irresistible appeal” and “a purely visceral pleasure”, and the New York Times referred to Baauer as a “rising talent.” Although somewhat popular in the EDM world, the viral spread of Baauer’s song “Harlem Shake” emerged not from inclusion in DJ set lists or radio play, but from a YouTube video posted eight months later. ![]() On May 22, 2012, Baauer (the musical alias of Harry Rodrigues, a 23 year old American DJ and producer) released a track titled Harlem Shake. “Harlem Shake” offers a case study to explore the contentious relationship around ownership, authorship, labor and sharecropping in the contemporary digital age through an examination of how the viral meme emerged and spread, its monetization, and the subsequent rise to stardom of the song’s composer. It is safe to say that the “Harlem Shake” rapidly surpassed the status of a “simple” internet meme and found its way as pop culture phenomenon, inspiring countless hours of creative endeavors participating in an “internet dance craze.” During this “internet dance craze,” the rights owners of the song that formed the musical accompaniment of the meme quickly realized the profit potential of the phenomenon, profiting handsomely from this opportunity through the architecture of control provided by YouTube. By Zachary McDowell and Mike Soha This is an abridged draft of a paper we are developing for publication. W e invite anyone to provide comment, criticism, or suggestion in the comment space below. We ask that you please honor that it’s being offered in draft form - both in your comments, which we hope will be constructive in tone, and in any use of the document: you may share the link to this essay as widely as you like, but please do not quote from this draft without the author’s permission.Īt its peak, the Harlem Shake meme was immensely successful at both generativity (generated nearly 4,000 YouTube videos uploads per day), and popularity ( it only took about 40 days to reach 1 billion views on Youtube, half the time that it took “Gangnam Style”). ![]()
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