We are officially living in the age of attention and monetization and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Both #FyreFest docs that came out this year were perfect in encapsulating this phenomenon of capitalizing online attraction. We saw kids pay thousands just to be a part of an idea that was represented only on Instagram.
While it failed, the same principle is now a staple in marketing everywhere: put the product in the hands of the ‘influencer’ and people will come.
Influencers are anyone one who can demand mass attention and companies will go to no end to make sure they get their content in their hands, even if it means paying a white kid stacks to do it.
A least that’s what’s happening with Seth Vangeldren, who, according to a recent interview with Rolling Stone, was reportedly offered six figures just to make one or two videos.
Seth was 10 when he first saw got a taste of going viral thanks to his impromptu breakdance at a high school basketball game in Florida. Little did he know, however, that two years later he’d have rappers and labels eating out of his hand due because of it.
Without even trying and by just being a generation-z kid — using musical.ly, TikTok, Dubsmash and other popular apps like Triller — his following began to grow and rappers started sending him requests to dance to their songs, a service for which Vangeldren charged $1,000 per track.
“It took me like a year to get to 1,000 followers because nobody knew me,” he tells Rolling Stone on his first visit to New York this week. “But then it took me five months after that to get to 10,000,” he continued.
After co-signs from Chris Brown, Lil Yachty, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Rich the Kid and more, it didn’t take long for record companies to catch on.
Labels like Alamo, Def Jam, and Atlantic Records all hit his line which, according to Vangeldren’s manager Tcal Watson, have fielded sizable offers for the preteen dancer to promote songs.
“I’m not going to say which label, but we’ve had six-figure deals so far,” Watson said. “It’s basically for campaign things, like helping roll out new singles or singles that may’ve already been released by making one or two Triller videos. It’s just Seth being as creative as possible.”
With Vangeldren’s followers on Instagram now north of 600,000 and growing it’s likely that he will continue to do videos as well as receive request to collaborate.
Using the strategy of going viral to promote music has been a bittersweet occurrence in rap. While on one hand, it can give a shot to an artist that may have never been heard, it also saturates to market and allows companies with the proper resources to cheat the system.
It’s like Katy Perry enlisting the backpack kid or Lil Wayne and Drake getting boosted by Shiggy — the game is different now.
The market and business model for music may be changing and Seth may be caught in the middle of it, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to be a kid.
“I hang out with all the same people at school that I did before I started dancing,” Vangeldren says. “And I just stay in my house, sometimes. I barely go outside.”
No matter how much he’s making, you can’t be mad at that.