Outside the Jukebox_How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession Into My Dream Gig

by Scott Bradlee

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I was very glad she’d said that because it looked like Postmodern Jukebox was about to break the Internet.

  Our “vintage” cover of “Thrift Shop” went on to receive a million views in just a week’s time. On the day after its release, it was the third most viewed video on all of YouTube. It felt so surreal to see a still image of ourselves on the site, right up there with some of the biggest celebrities. Robyn would send me screenshots of different funny comments and emails that she received; she enjoyed the fan mail and would always try to write back. My inbox, meanwhile, was overflowing with requests, well-wishes, and inquiries from people wanting to hire our band—which was slightly problematic, since Postmodern Jukebox was, to me, a video series, not a band. Thus began the long, winding journey of attempting to define what exactly Postmodern Jukebox is.

  As is the case whenever a project gains traction, the smartest thing I could do right then was to keep going.

  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE MY YOUTUBE TROLLS

  So have you read the comments on ‘Don’t You Worry Child’?”

  “Not really, why?” I cringed, afraid that Robyn had stumbled across another negative one that might ruin her day. She was still very new to the whole performing thing.

  “Lots of people say I look like someone named Sasha Grey. So… I looked her up, and she’s a porn star.”

  “Oh jeez, people say crazy stuff. Are you upset about that?”

  “No,” she smiled. “She’s really pretty! So I’m okay with it. Well, other than seeing a few things when I was Googling her that I now can’t unsee.”

  I was becoming all too familiar with the phenomenon that is the YouTube comments section. It was—and still is—a strange, sometimes ruthless place where you can observe our society slowly learning to get used to madness born out of the collusion of anonymity, freedom of speech, and the ability to say something to the entire world at once. Before the Internet, most people didn’t have to go through life reading vile insults directed at them on a daily basis, a phenomenon that is now familiar to most artists who release material digitally. And although reading negative or even downright cruel comments may initially prove disheartening, it’s not necessarily a bad exercise for an artist looking to develop a thick skin.

  An incredibly small percentage of YouTube viewers will take the time to comment on a video, even if it’s absolutely their favorite video. Sure, the more invested viewers might give it a “like” or a share, but the vast majority simply watch it and then continue on with their day. Of the small percentage of viewers who do choose to comment, there are likely to be some who enjoy expressing contrarian points of view or who take malicious pleasure in undercutting another person’s accomplishments. These, in sum, are your proverbial haters, and there’s not much you can do to stop them from hating, short of banning everyone and anyone from leaving comments. And while I did, at times, contemplate doing just that, I soon learned that engagement from the haters often actually strengthened and mobilized our fan base.

  I began to think of the YouTube comments section as its own strange ecosystem, full of diverse organisms interacting with one another in ways that, intentionally or unintentionally, influenced the health and growth of the system itself. Here’s a rundown of just a few of the organisms I observed:

  Cheerleaders—Always positive and enthusiastic, as the name implies. Providers of unwavering support and happy vibes, cheerleaders are often the first to comment; their upbeat feedback nicely primes your other viewers to follow up with their own notes of appreciation.

  Critics—Often people who self-identify as fans, though you only hear from them when they don’t like something. They generally avoid knee-jerk hateful comments and try to maintain a standard of objectivity in their criticisms. When their comments are spot-on, critics can provide precious insight into your blind spots. When their comments focus more on pointing out mistakes and weaknesses that you’re aware of already, critics can prove even more frustrating than outright trolls. This is especially true if you’re someone with a recently tamed perfectionist streak.

  Advocates—Although they do on occasion write positive, thoughtful messages of support, advocates are more frequently found offering rebuttals to critics that demonstrate substantial knowledge about the content’s creator. Cultivating a strong fan base among this breed of commenter can prove handy, as advocates will reliably jump in to explain and defend your work when discussion in the comments section becomes heated—which spares you the trouble of doing so yourself (note: avoid doing so at all costs if you value your sanity).

  Professors—The authors of what are by far the longest comments, often sharing “inside” information and/or historical perspective on a video. Their primary goal is to educate others, although they will, on occasion, write gratuitously long essays as rebuttals to critics.

  Parasites—Known for commenting with expressions of support that double as thinly veiled pleas for others to watch their own videos. It’s an age-old strategy to get more attention, but hey, I’ve been there, so I can’t really knock the hustle.

  Comics—The purveyors of the clever one-liners that get the most up votes, usually rendering them top comment. Comics seem like fun people, and their humor helps keep others on your page longer, which translates to more watch time on your videos.

  Trolls—The proverbial haters who are “gonna hate.” Trolls’ comments are generally so outlandish as to be laughable. The impulse may be to block them, but if you let your advocates go after them instead, you’ll find that the ongoing conflict continues to bring those locked in the debate back to your video and page, thereby keeping engagement high and the discussion alive.

  The typical pattern for our early Postmodern Jukebox videos commenced with the Cheerleaders leading the pack out of the gate (often declaring “First!” in the process), followed by a couple Critics, once they’d had time to formulate their argument, chiming in to make a case for why the video was actually, “meh, not your best work.” This then led to the beginnings of a subthread comment war, as Advocates rushed in to tell the Critics why they were wrong. Often, both sides would lose their tempers, and the attacks become increasingly personal. In the midst of all the distracting subdrama, a Comic would find just enough cover to sneak in and submit the perfect one-liner that would begin to accumulate up votes. As the view count grew, a Troll might wander by to offer a concise and under-punctuated “you suck just give up.” The next day, a Professor would pontificate on the video’s true intent to the masses and provide detailed biographical information on every person who took part in the video. For some reason, whatever he says will likely get marked as spam.

  Really, it’s all a bit of madness, and initially it seems like an awful thing to have to deal with. However, this commenting ecosystem plays an important role in building a following. You want haters; when there are haters, your following bands together and becomes even more loyal to you. If you don’t have haters, despair not. It only means that not enough people have seen your work yet. Look forward to the day when you do finally get the haters you’ve been waiting for and can thank them for taking time out of their busy schedules to help generate more views and discussion on your video. Or, do as I’ve done on a few occasions and offer them an obviously over-the-top apology with a promise to “try harder,” followed by a link to a generic-looking “FREE Chili Lime Wings!” coupon you found on Google image search. There’s just no way to answer that.

  For those of you still troubled by the terribleness of most website comments sections, I can offer my reassurance that the overall trend online seems to be moving away from anonymous posting and increasingly toward the linking of comments with actual individuals. Presumably, this will encourage people to interact more civilly with one another online. In the meantime, however, it’s best to develop a thick skin and view the whole circus with detached amusement and an appreciation for what said circus can do for you. Robyn perhaps never got completely used to re
ading comments like “singer looks like bitch,” but she did eventually devise her own solution to feeling at the mercy of the comments section’s sometimes cruelty—by stopping reading the comments altogether.

  While my YouTube fans and trolls were busy at each other’s throats, I was hard at work, trying to follow the success of “Thrift Shop” with another video that would further cement our viral credentials. This next Postmodern Jukebox video spotlighted another current pop song: Ke$ha’s club anthem “Die Young.” Recalling my years as Motown Nickelback Guy, I was somewhat worried that releasing another jazz-influenced video could pigeonhole the group, so we called on Robyn’s ability to mimic a country-and-western twang and the talents of our violinist friend David Wong to give the arrangement an old-time country twist. It was a simple video, but then again, we weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel; we just wanted to put out another entertaining song remake—in this case, it was “Ke$ha Gone Country.”

  THE INTERNET AS AMPLIFIER

  Ever since my very first video went viral, I had looked to understand which websites could be used in coordination with YouTube to best help my future videos make a splash. I had spent a couple weeks studying the inner workings of Reddit—the site of user-curated links that was undoubtedly responsible for the killer viral spread of “Thrift Shop”—and trying to pick out some of the repeat characteristics of successful posts. One thing that seemed to be in our favor was the fact that the denizens of Reddit—“redditors”—seemed to prefer the kind of guerrilla-style, low-budget, single-camera videos I made over slicker productions. There was also a tendency to root for the underdog on Reddit—something we could use to our advantage.

  When it came time to launch the “Die Young” video, I threw up a shamelessly Reddit-friendly title on the post: “I had a couple of hours free yesterday, so I invited some friends over to do a Country remake of a Ke$ha song. Let me know what you think.” Given that the post’s title was what people saw first on Reddit, it needed to be eminently clickable, enticing in what it promised to deliver while also appealing to the website’s community in their own voice. I would spend hours coming up with potential titles, running them by Robyn and “Die Young” violinist David Wong, another Reddit aficionado. This was before the term clickbait exploded in popularity and application, but there’s no question that the DIY strategy I was employing at the time was remarkably similar in principle. In any case, it worked, and I felt confident doing it because I knew we at least had great content to back it up.

  Since my subscriber count on YouTube was still small, making it to the front page of a huge site like Reddit was akin to hitting the jackpot; achieving that alone could very quickly get us upward of two hundred thousand additional views. From there, YouTube’s ranking algorithm took care of most of the promotion for us, automatically identifying such a video as “viral” and then highlighting it site-wide.

  Our new video was met with grumbling from a few redditors who (correctly) saw us as having greater, more commercial ambitions than simply jamming in my apartment. Their gripes and our true intentions aside, the post shot to the front page once again, securing us another viral hit. This was huge; it’s rare to achieve viral success at all, and it’s rarer still to repeat that success. My YouTube subscriber base was rapidly expanding, now passing thirty thousand, and requests and song suggestions were coming through nonstop. Fans seemed to be taking to our model of translating current pop songs into vintage genres quite readily, and they were also demonstrating a willingness to purchase (not even illegally download!) our music wherever and whenever we made it available. In her very first interview, Robyn—when asked to name her favorite jazz singer—responded with, “Probably Ke$ha.”

  Our fame was clearly on the rise. It was time, I decided, to produce an EP that would announce to the world that Postmodern Jukebox was a legitimate musical act.

  MAKING IT ON A BUDGET

  Introducing Postmodern Jukebox may have been the lowest-budget album that charted in 2013. Everything, from the cover art (a photo of Adam, Allan, Robyn, and me, taken using the self-timer on my camera) to the recording process (live, one-take recordings that I engineered, mixed, and mastered myself), went against what a record label—no matter how small—would generally agree to release. The levels were frequently inconsistent, since I didn’t use monitors and played on my keyboard instead of a real acoustic piano. On one track, you can even detect the hum of an air conditioner in the background. Even so, I knew releasing entertaining content was more important than repeatedly polishing something that I would likely never feel satisfied calling complete anyway. I managed to find a small distributor that could get the album on iTunes and other outlets, and before long, we had our first EP out in the world.

  The EP featured “Thrift Shop” and “Die Young,” new remakes of Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t You Worry Child” and Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat,” and an “electro-swing” remix of “Thrift Shop” produced by French DJs Bart & Baker. I also included two “bonus tracks”: alternate versions of a couple of the songs, digitally aged to sound as though they were recorded on turn-of-the-century phonographs, `a la BioShock Infinite. With minimal instrumentation consisting of just my Nord keyboard, Adam’s upright bass, Allan’s snare drum, a horn or two, and Robyn’s voice, the new songs perpetuated the “modern pop-as-vintage jazz” trend we had been cultivating.

  The EP qualified as both a live album and a studio album because we shot videos to go along with every single live-recorded track. No overdubs were used, and every track was recorded simultaneously in my living room on an 8-track setup. I didn’t even hire an outside engineer; I would press Record on my laptop and my Canon 60D camera and then scurry back to my place at the keyboard to count off the band. There were no monitors for the vocal mic, either, so a lot of the time poor Robyn could barely hear herself. To render the videos more entertaining than your standard studio session fare, we incorporated sight gags and played to the camera, letting our sense of humor shine and the fun we were having show. Each session, of course, ended with an order for falafel sandwiches, usually from Pita Pan, a restaurant in Astoria with a ridiculous website that played pita-themed drum and bass while you perused the menu.

  Introducing peaked at number two on the iTunes jazz charts in the week of its release, supplanting many conventional jazz artists and evergreen recordings in the process. I was shocked and very excited. This was before my enthusiasm was tempered by my learning that jazz was the lowest-selling category on iTunes, but even so, it was an accomplishment. The key to our success—I was sure of it—was the videos; I positioned links alongside each video to drive traffic to the album, so each individual video was effectively an additional opportunity to boost album sales. The “Thrift Shop” remix proved unexpectedly popular internationally; it became a top-ten hit in Hungary, and the video I made for it—a series of public domain performance clips of Cab Calloway cut to fit the music by way of digital editing—was featured on a popular movie review site over there. A firm believer in being accessible to my fans and showing love for their love for us, I tried my best to answer as much Hungarian fan mail as possible (thanks, Google Translate!).

  Thus was established the Postmodern Jukebox formula for album releases: release a bunch of videos as singles, then repackage them together as an album and add a few new tracks to draw the release period out over the course of about a month, rolling out new videos each week. To me, this release schedule continues to make sense for Internet-based music acts, and it feels much more natural than going into a studio every couple years to slave away on one painstakingly considered album. Times have changed, and the definition of an “album”—once typically reserved for the long-playing record—should probably be changing with them. My thinking went something like this: We don’t use records anymore, so why persist in making albums based on that tradition if most people are simply going to purchase (or stream) only their favorite singles anyway? I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of tailoring my c
reative output to new media, so the decline of album sales following the advent of digital music formats hasn’t troubled me all that much. Just spend less money making the albums and release more songs, and it all evens out. That’s my philosophy, at least, and it will be for as long as it keeps proving successful.

  At the time of the EP’s release, most industry people had a hard time wrapping their heads around what I was doing. When Billboard contacted me to ask for a photo credit on our album cover, I wrote back, “Photo by camera self-timer”; Billboard reps asked me twice to clarify this statement. A number of video production companies contacted me, trying to sell me on services that would “take my music videos to the next level.” They seemed perplexed when I assured them that we were precisely as hi-fi as we wanted to be, thank you very much. There was a charm to what we were doing—I felt it; our fans clearly appreciated it—and I wanted to maintain that DIY ethos for as long as possible and stay the scrappy underdog. Postmodern Jukebox felt to me like an Internet secret, seemingly known only to a select group of vintage music fans and the occasional very vocal hater.