Results for articles with tag 'lilyallen' (1 total)
09/09/2007 07:01:43 PM 
This isn't new news, but it is newsworthy. We just noticed that Lily Allen, pop singer of recent note, produced a music video in association with the world's largest videogame publisher, Electronic Arts. Here's the twist: she resang her song in the made-up language of The Sims videogame franchise, known as Simlish. Other artists like The Black Eyed Peas, Barenaked Ladies, and Depeche Mode have recorded songs in Simlish before, but the addition of a viral machinima video to the mix landed both Capitol Records and EA a nice hit. Back in 2003, this very blog had this to say about machinima, "In the nearer future, watch for machinima popping up in ad agencies as a superior way to storyboard, to inexpensively test concepts and ultimately to produce advertising." How prescient. The Smile (Simlish) video is EA's most viewed YouTube effort at almost 1.8 million views (between two similar videos). The standard Smile video has received 3.7 million.
The Simlish video was part of a larger advertising effort tied into EA's February 2007 acquisition, online music community site, Singshot.com. The contest only generated 110 entries, but Singshot is worth checking out. It's an online karaoke site like Fox Interactive's own acquisition ksolo.com. Within a couple of minutes, you can record yourself in audio and video singing thousands of songs. Michelle Tsai over at Slate has a great rundown of the ease and the appeal. Maybe it's too easy, actually. This intrepid blogger may or may not have recorded a take of Petey Pablo's "Raise Up." The problem for Singshot might be that a Ksolo/American Idol partnership would be awful tough to beat in the marketplace.
Written by Alexis Madrigal, a former gaming analyst who blogs at the rather excellent Consumer Conspicuous. Writer, producer, and consumerist, he is a product of Ridgefield, WA (pop. 3000) and Harvard’s English department. Trained as an analyst, he is interested in consumers with limitations—children, the poor, rural residents, housewives, the elderly, non-English speakers—and their uses of interactive entertainment.
Posted by Ed Cotton
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Articles for tag lilyallen (1 total).