EMINEM
TAKES TOP HONOR AT YOUTUBE MUSIC AWARDS
New York City (AFP) - YouTube's
first-ever music awards thrilled and spilled, with Eminem named Artist of the
Year though most winners were lesser known acts who featured in an eclectic
show filled with stunts.
Sunday's webcast was kicked off by
indie rockers Arcade Fire performing their new song "Afterlife" in a
live video performance featuring a chorus of young girl singers in Pier 36, a
sprawling indoor events space in New York.
Up next was a crying Lady Gaga,
minus her trademark peroxide blonde hair and make-up, dressed in a tomboyish
baseball cap marked "Dope," for a first performance of an eponymous
song that she delivered in a haunting, melancholic tone while playing the
piano.
Pictures later showed the enigmatic
artist, well-known for unpredictable behavior, scantily clad and in an
apparently distressed state on stage, with fans reaching up to touch her.
Hosted by actor Jason Schwartzman
and musician-comedian Reggie Watts, the show's creative director Spike Jonze said
before the event that he wanted to stay true to the video-sharing website's
experimental origins.
The 90-minute affair may have split
the Internet audience down the middle, judging by comments posted on Twitter,
in which some people complained of censorship, when the show's live stream
stopped several times.
The Breakthrough Act award, however,
seemed to stay loyal to Jonze's aim, as it was taken home by Macklemore &
Ryan Lewis, whose featured video was shot for $5,000 and placed on YouTube,
leading to great success.
The inaugural YouTube Music Awards
joins a variety of industry events such as the Grammys, MTV Video Music Awards
and American Music Awards, entering the fray at a time when people increasingly
turn to the Internet for streaming and on-demand programming.
Unlike the established awards
ceremonies, YouTube's event organizers said the nominees and winners were
tallied in a distinctly Internet-age manner, based on "viewership,
subscriber, and/or engagement metrics."
While big names Miley Cyrus, Psy,
Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber were nominated for the coveted best video award it
was K-Pop phenoms Girls' Generation who took home the prize, for their song
"I Got a Boy."
The clips nominated for video of the
year pulled in more than 1.9 billion views ahead of Sunday's show, according to
YouTube's trends blog.
Eminem took home the top artist
award, performing "Rap God," in the New York venue, but while the
white rapper is known for his ability to shock his performance was not the most
controversial feature of the show.
That was probably claimed by a short
film by Lena Dunham, in which a young lovelorn man, apparently suffering from
depression, agrees to commit suicide with a girl he just met.
"I'm so happy the audience
chose the double suicide and not the romance. Y'all always pull through for
me," Dunham, writer and creator of the hit HBO show "Girls,"
tweeted shortly after the mock suicide in which blood from the victims was
spattered over the audience.
The YouTube event also honored the
violinist Lindsey Stirling, whose career was drastically boosted or even
enabled by the video-sharing platform, with the Best response award for videos
that were remixed or parodied.
The Phenomenon Award, meanwhile,
went to Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble," video, and
Innovation of the year went to DeStorm Power, the 160th most subscribed YouTube
user whose 250 videos on the website have been watched more than 200 million
times.
Official videos for all 10 artist of
the year nominees attracted nearly 10 billion views from October 2012 to the
beginning of the month.
In August last year, the Nielsen
rating agency published a survey in which 64 percent of American adolescents
said they listened to music on YouTube, compared with no more than 56 percent who
said they listened to radio.
In another sign that tides are
turning for standard forms of entertainment media, online streaming service
Netflix hauled in a trove of Emmy nominations earlier this year for shows such
as political saga "House of Cards," which vied for best drama
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