Social media is best way for a music act to get discovered. You can't make millions of people show up to your open-mic night performance, but if you can get a few people to watch your YouTube video, that little success could roll into a viral smash and all the attention that comes with. YouTube is the more obvious option for musicians, but one act has used Vine to earn itself a record deal with Republic.
Us, consisting of married couple Michael and Carissa Rae Alvarado, is a folk-pop group in the tradition of Mumford & Sons or Edward Sharpe, were signed to Republic Records on March 18. Six months ago, they had more than 300,000 YouTube subscribers, but that apparently wasn't enough to merit big label attention.
Us turned to Vine, a more difficult format to work with due to the site's requirement that all videos fit within six seconds. The pair began a series called "#6SecondCovers" where the duo played six-second versions of songs such as John Legend's "All of Me" and Quad City DJ's Space Jam theme song. They found huge success with their version of The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather," which drew a repost from Jerome Jarre, a Vine superstar who has more than 4.9 million followers.
The duo's 4,000 followers escalated to 1.5 million after Jarre's help, and then an appearance on Good Morning America boosted Us up to 2.5 million followers.
Us self-released its debut album No Matter Where You Are, but the album will be rereleased on Republic later this Spring.
