MUSIC INTERVIEW: MERIDITH VALIANDO

Digitour 2012: Bringing the Musical Stars of YouTube to a Venue Near You

By: Team Buzzine

January 13, 2012

Last Spring, Team Buzzine was at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, CA to witness the preparations and initial show of the DigiTour: an innovative phenomenon translating digital success into real-world impact. Bringing together the biggest musical stars of YouTube and taking them from their bedrooms and dorm rooms and out on the road was a stroke of genius shared by DigiTour's co-founders: Sarah Evershed (now Sarah Penna) of Big Frame, and Meridith Valiando and Christopher Rojas of Greenhouse Entertainment. They blended their entertainment industry experience to bring together the best of the new and traditional worlds to create something entirely unique. Here, at the start of 2012 and as the second DigiTour is announced, Meridith Valiando sat down with Buzzine's Stefan Goldby in Los Angeles to talk about the past, present, and future of one of the most exciting new touring packages of recent years…

Stefan Goldby: Your professional background is in A&R and artist management. When did YouTube first appear on your personal radar as a potential place to discover emerging talent?

Meridith Valiando: I met my now-partner of DigiTour, Sarah Evershed…Penna – she's married now to Joe Penna, MysteryGuitarMan…and we kind of brought our worlds together. She was managing YouTube stars and I was managing traditional music talent, and we figured out how to merge and create an intersection between our two worlds. So we created the first-ever YouTube tour. And then my partner, Chris Rojas, with Greenhouse Entertainment…we were developing artists, so the three of us got together and created the DigiTour over two years ago.

We had our first run last year, and we're going into our second year March 2012. But I started to realize the importance of YouTube when I was representing an artist at Capitol Records and the label was asking me to figure out how to get his numbers up, and I just started to realize there's something to the talent on YouTube, and there's something to these views and these subscribers, and I started to immerse myself in it. So I threw myself headfirst in with the DigiTour and got to know all the biggest YouTube stars and kind of understand what their world is all about. They collaborate with each other, they create content…although some people might think that it's the odd video that gets ten million views.

The YouTubers that we put on the DigiTour are content creators and they are posting weekly, sometimes twice a week, and this is their full-time job. They make money doing it, and I find it fascinating. I think it's the next level of the entertainment industry. I think that's where we're going. They make money on the ad revenue, and ad-based revenue makes a ton of sense when no one is buying music. So you're looking at the brands to integrate into the videos or the advertising around the videos to support the talent and the content, as opposed to looking at the consumer saying, “Buy my video,” or, “Buy my single.” Changing that around allows for artists, musicians, YouTube personalities to have a really good career.

And I think that the music industry is still scratching their heads saying, “Well, how do we tap into this in a bigger way?” and, “Nobody's buying songs!” and everyone is panicking. So for me, as a talent scout at heart, for somebody who really wants to work with the best talent and find platforms for them to succeed and to find money for them…because obviously I wouldn't be a good manager if I didn't make my artists any money…it's tapping into this new paradigm and being able to identify talent on YouTube who already have a pre-existing base and then building on that.

Also connecting them to traditional media and bridging the gap between new media and traditional media, and giving them platforms off of YouTube while still nurturing their online presence. Carmen, DeStorm, and Christina Grimmie just swept the new media category of the AMAs, and DigiTour is very proud of our past artists…and really, these YouTube stars are going on to huge things. YouTube is big in and of itself, but you're seeing, like, The Annoying Orange now has a TV show with Cartoon Network; Ricky Ficarelli – we just put his band together and we have something very exciting that we're putting together around him as well. And this platform of YouTube is truly enabling talent to exist in a really tough entertainment landscape where many traditional entertainment people don't know where the money is coming from.

SG: We love the fact that DigiTour took the new online environment that YouTube created and moved it back toward the traditional music environment of selling tickets, selling merch, being on tour. Were there obstacles in setting that up? You said the music industry really didn't understand it two years ago. How were those initial days of going out in the world and booking the venues in the very beginnings of DigiTour?

MV: Once Sarah and Chris, my two partners…we decided, “We're gonna do this! It's gonna be revolutionary! It's gonna be fantastic! We're so excited!” And then it was like, “Let's assemble our team. Let's get everybody on board,” and I thought it was gonna be easy, and to some extent it was, but there were a lot of people that just didn't understand it.

So there were a lot of non-believers. But I never hear “no” -- I hear “maybe” and then I work my way to “yes,” and that's something that I heard in a Jerry Weintrab documentary, and it really stuck with me because I think it's an important way of approaching anything. Any big thing that you want to do, you're gonna hear tons of “no's” and you're gonna have doors slammed in your face, and you have to really have that conviction to see it through…working those “maybes” into “yeses,” and there's a lot of that.

There was a lot of that the first year of DigiTour. So we went to ICM and the agent there, who represents Beyonce and Drake and Usher, his name is Dennis Ashley – I said, “Dennis! I've got something for you. It's gonna be great! We're gonna take the YouTube stars -- the biggest names -- we're talking 200 million views, we're talking a billion views. If we get the right group together, we'll really have something here -- something really fantastic and cutting-edge, and they have the fans. They really are making their mark.” And he loved it and he got on board, which was a huge thing, but then he had to go to all the talent buyers in all the various cities -- the guy in Texas and the guy in Chicago and the guy in New York -- and say, “We're gonna have these artists, who are the biggest YouTube stars in the world, come play your venue.”

We had halls that were 500 to 1,000-seaters saying, “We don't know who these people are,” because they're used to getting a call from Dennis -- maybe not the thousand-seaters, but these are talent buyers who also buy for larger venues -- they hear from Dennis when it's Beyonce or it's Drake, and those are names they're familiar with because they have a song on the radio. So he really had to say, “Listen: trust me.”

We had a lot of that because it takes an army, a village to get a tour of this size and this many artists. We had 50 or so people in different capacities involved in making the DigiTour a reality. So it was literally brick by brick, we were laying the foundation and saying, “Okay, this is why it's gonna be great, and this is why you have to just trust us. People are gonna buy tickets,” because people that didn't believe said, “Well, these numbers…how do they sell tickets, and how do they sell this?” and I go, “Don't worry about that! You'll see, and you'll see, and you'll see,” and now, this second year, it's a whole other ballgame because we proved that we can sell tickets and we can make noise, and that the numbers on YouTube are not just some computer nerd hacking in and messing with the system. They're real, and there are people that are tuning in, and there's this captive audience, and it's a phenomenon.

Truly, you have these stars who have made such an impact, and they have done it, in most cases, from their bedroom with no budget, and they just have connected to their audience directly, and these fans will go to the moon for them. Maybe next year we're gonna be like, “We're gonna be on the moon, so you can come and see the show there. It's gonna be a great DigiTour…” [Laughs] The point is, it's real, and we proved that. But the first go-around was completely me and my partners just really explaining why this was gonna work, and a lot of people saying, “Okay, we'll see.” That's what it was like.

SG: We were there with our cameras that first show at the El Rey, and there were a lot of people who were very excited. Nervous, but more excited about what it could be. At what point, during that first tour, did you actually think, “This is really gonna work”? Obviously you always believed it could work, but was there a moment where you were just like, “I was right. This is great.”

MV: I think it was that first night in Los Angeles, because up to that point, I was telling everyone it was gonna work, and I believed it -- I wasn't lying -- but you have a moment where you go, “Okay, I really hope I was right. I really hope there’s a line outside the door. I really hope these kids are gonna come out.” And we knew because we had ticket counts, but it was still surreal. This was a dream, and it took over a year to make it a reality. And that was the defining moment -- to see who is gonna show up and who is gonna be there. And I think it was when Britney Spears arrived at the El Rey that I go, “Oh, okay. This is real. This is really special.”

And we're getting noticed not only by tons of kids who… I mean, yes, Britney was exciting, but I was excited to see that people showed up, and that night, I saw the show was great, the audience loved it, and the next day, all three producers – we were on the bus, we were in the bunks, and we were driving to the next city, and it was just like, “We’re on the road,” and the rest is history…

SG: The next six weeks, the next 26 cities... What's the biggest lesson you learned from the first DigiTour?

MV: What I learned was that there's a lot that goes into putting on a concert, and there's even more that goes into putting on a tour. I have tremendous faith in my partners and in our vision, but we underestimated a little bit how much work it actually was. And when we had about 50 people actually working on the project, you carry a lot of responsibility, and the success is really important, so I think this go-around, a couple things that we learned: Tuesdays and Wednesdays are not good nights. [Laughs] So we're really gonna focus our dates on the weekends. Thursday until Monday even. We are going to really target families in general.

One thing I noticed...it was funny, actually. Right before the LA date, we were doing tons of ticket promotion and press, and trying to get as much awareness as possible, and a couple of kids…because our audience is young, for the most part. And one kid had uploaded a video saying, “Please, DigiTour, tell my mom to get me tickets to the show. She doesn’t really know what it is and I just want her to know that it’s okay for me to go.” So this was like an "A-ha!" moment because I think, to market the tour, we've got to make sure they know what it is.

So what we did is we rallied the team. We were over at Sarah and Joe/MysteryGuitarMan's house, and we invited over all of the headliners, and we set up cameras and made a video for this young boy's mother, and we said, “Please let Nicholas Dayton go to the DigiTour.” And as a whole group, we explained what the DigiTour was, we explained why he should be able to go, and it was later that we actually saw some of these parents at the show, and they came up and said, “This was great. I would bring my kids to this next year.” It's just a cool experience. It's fun, it's for the family, it's also for the college kids -- there's something for everyone in the lineup, but I think mostly we just want to share with our audience what they can expect so they want to go out and get a ticket for themselves and for all of their friends.

SG: Walk us through the headliners for this year's upcoming second DigiTour...

MV: We have Dave Days – he's joining us again. So is DeStorm and Ricky Ficarelli. Those are our returning headliners. And Ricky will be with his band, which I'm so excited to share with everybody. These guys are amazing, and...announcements to come on that. And we have Alex Goot, Key of Awesome – they’ll be recreating their parodies live on stage, which I think is gonna be extremely fun for everybody to see. And Asher Monroe will be joining us as well. And Nice Peter! Nice Peter is going to be recreating his epic rap battles of history on stage. A big part of the show is our video monitors. We're gonna have two big ones. Last year, we had a Twitter feed on, and DeStorm did his Twitter random topic rapping. He was allowing the audience to weigh in on what he should rap about, and this year we’ll have two. So we'll have the epic rap battles going with Nice Peter, and we'll have the parodies…and the video component is going to be pretty amazing and something to look forward to.

SG: Is that the biggest difference, from a concert-goer's perspective, compared to last year -- a bigger production?

MV: Bigger production, and I think also we’re creating a festival vibe in each city by inviting out as many local and regional YouTubers of note as possible, so every individual show – while the headliners will remain the same – you're going to see so many faces, especially in that city, that will be meaningful to YouTube fans. I'd like to think of this eventually as becoming like the Lollapalooza of the Internet. If you are a social media fan and you love YouTube, you're gonna go to your local DigiTour and you're gonna see not one or two, or even five YouTubers – you're gonna see like ten, and you're gonna get to meet them and you're gonna get to see some really cool merch that is specifically made for the tour, and it's gonna be an experience. So we're building on that experience, producing it so that that experience is even more interactive and exciting than it was last year.

SG: Talk a little bit about the VIP tickets and how we can get a hold of those.

MV: VIP tickets went on sale December 19th exclusively on the DigiTour.com and also YouTube/thedigitour. So this year Topspin, who we work with, is embedded into YouTube, so you can buy these ticket packages right from our channel. So we can be saying, “Go get ‘em!” and you can go and click right below and you can get 'em, and that's pretty exciting. There's three tiers… you'll have a couple of options. In the VIP Experience, there’s the meet-and-greet where you get to meet all of the stars; in another level, you get the DigiTour t-shirt and poster; and there’s other things we’re throwing in there for everyone this year that you can see all the details of on the website and on the YouTube channel.

SG: What's your biggest hope for DigiTour 2012?

MV: My hope for DigiTour 2012 is that we sell out the tour. And this year, we're going to be live streaming each and every tour stop in a virtual world… We'll be announcing more details about that later. I want as many people as possible to be a part of DigiTour. And because it's not capped at the 500-1,000 seats, we're talking about many hundreds of thousands, millions of people around the world can be a part of this. It's a movement, and I just want to empower and inspire and encourage as many fans as possible to be a part of DigiTour, to follow us on Twitter, to check our website out, and you'll hear more updates about how you can really become a part of it, whether you're in the seats physically or you're experiencing it online.

SG: Finally, having lived it for the past year plus and being poised to jump fully back into it right now, what do you think makes DigiTour unique?

MV: DigiTour is unique because it's the first ever YouTube national tour, and I think that we've really created a unique experience for the talent and then for the audience. There's nothing like DigiTour right now. There are some YouTubers who go out on the road and perform and go on tour, but there's no organized tour in this way where YouTubers are together and in this community. And YouTube is a community. I mean, everyone knows one another. It's fantastic to see the warm and fuzzy experience of all these YouTubers in the same environment, on the bus… It was an incredible journey [laughs], and then the fans are also a part of that community, and that's what makes it so special. So it's unique because there's nothing else like it, and I think we put on a great show and we're gonna put on a great show this coming March…

DigiTour 2012 rolls through 18 US and Canadian cities between March 7th and April 4th.

Head to the official DigiTour Website and the DigiTour YouTube Channel for tickets and more info.