Musicians who achieved super stardom through YouTube.

Esmee Denters

The Dutch singer caught Justin Timberlake’s attention on YouTube and became the first artist signed to his record label. She released her first album in 2008, which hit it big in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, and the US. Since then, she’s toured around the world as an opening act for Timberlake as well as Ne-Yo and Enrique Iglasias.

You can watch the first 3 videos she ever uploaded here. 

Austin Mahone

Ordained the “Baby Bieber,” the 16-year old Mahone was first discovered on YouTube before signing to Young Money, Cash Money records. His self-titled album was released in 2013 and blew up the charts. He also recently won a VMA award for Artist To Watch This Year. He’s so popular with his 7 gazilion Twitter followers that he Skypes with girls for money!

Arnel Pineda

The Philippines born Pineda was born of humble origins in the poor Asian country of 7,000 islands. Like many Filipinos, he loved singing and had plenty of musical talents. Starting in 2007, he began videoing his karaoke performances and uploading them to YouTube. No matter if it was Aerosmith, Led Zepplin, Survivor, the Eagles, or yes – Journey – he was singing, Pineda sounded flawless. His videos caught notice and he was soon asked to audition for Journey. By the end of that year, he was the official front man of that band. What an incredible rise to stardom!

Charice Pompengo

Another Filipino with a crystalline, emboldened voice, the tiny Charice first caught notice through her YouTube videos. She was soon invited to the Oprah Show, where the Big O called her, “The most talented girl in the world.” That’s about all the endorsement you need to make it in the entertainment business, and Pompengo was signed to a label, made an album, had a hit song, joined the cast of Glee, and signed on to be a judge on the Filipino version of X Factor. Not a bad run!

You can watch her video here. 

Greyson Chance

Greyson was even younger than most of his YouTube star cohorts when he caught the world’s attention. Only in 6th grade, he played piano and sang Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” at a school talent show. It was videos and uploaded to YouTube and before he knew it, the world had fallen in love with his golden voice. Ellen DeGeneres heard about the video and invited him to her show to perform. Ellen knew she was on to something huge so she formed her own record label– just for Greyson – and signed him as the first and only act! Since then, he’s peaked at #29 on the US album charts and toured all over the world.

You can watch his 6th grade video here. 

Justin Bieber

Before the snarling attitude and annoying condescension, Bieber was just another Canadian kid, albeit with heaps of musical talent. He started in local talent competitions at the age of 12. In 2007, his mother started uploading videos of him singing to YouTube so his family and friends come enjoy his performances. His YouTube account took off and soon Scooter Braun noticed, who later became his manager. Braun flew him to Atlanta where he met with Usher, signed, and the rest is history!

***

There are plenty of other YouTube musical sensations, like Andy McKee, Julia Nunes, Chantelle Redman, Avery, Alyssa Bernal, Terra Naomi, Sam Tsui, Cimorelli, Dondria, Boyce Avenue, Ysabella Brave, Cody Simpson, and about 100 more that have achieved superstardom in the time it took you to read this post! Feel free to comment or email us about your favorite YouTube stars!

Just how powerful is Google?

It’s common knowledge that Google is the world’s biggest search engine, but it’s still easy to underestimate just how powerful the Mountain View, Ca company is.  Google single handedly impacts just about every facet of life in America, including influencing media, technology, entertainment, commerce, and how we filter our reality.  And it’s not just internet searches – Google owns YouTube.com, the biggest video site in the world, as well as Android, the Google Chrome web browser, Blogger.com, Google Glasses, and Gmail email services, among many others.

We put together 15 facts that demonstrates just what that means.

1. Google holds a 65.6% market share of all U.S. Internet searches.  That’s about 45% higher than the second competitor, Bing.com.

2. Google accounts for 85.78% of worldwide search engine market share.

3. Google receives about 7.2 billion page views per day, or over 87.8 billion searches per month!  The next highest is 14.5 billion searches by China’s top search engine, Baidu. 

4. About 620 million people visit Google.com every day.

5. In 2013, Google brought in $59.83 billion in revenue.  Its total assets are listed at $110.92 billion.

6. Just through the first half of 2012, Google had already taken in more ad dollars than the entire U.S. print media collects every year.

7. Google originates most of its ad dollars from AdWords, and advertisers spent $38.6 billion with Google last year, up 73% from 2005. To put that in perspective, Facebook generated $6.4 billion in advertising that same year.

8. Google has an estimated $144 billion market value, which tops media giants Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, the iconic ad agency Publicis Groupe, and the New York Times…COMBINED!

9. Google has more than one million servers around the world as of 2007, managing 24 Petabytes of data.

10. It has 70 offices in 40 countries and employs well over 52,000 people.

11. Every day, Google uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes.

12. Google is listed as the #1 website in the world.

13. “Google” is now a verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary.

14. In 2013, Google ranked #5 for spending of all political lobbyists.

15. Google has purchased a 1 million square foot commercial space in London, England, which should be ready as a main office by 2016.