Unless you were living off the grid in the summer of 2007, you likely marveled for a moment or two at the unadulterated weirdness that is Tay Zonday. Back then, he was just Adam Bahner, a graduate student in American studies at the University of Minnesota. But a music video he had uploaded to YouTube months before suddenly experienced a burst of renown. His “Chocolate Rain” quickly racked up 4 million views. In short order, John Mayer covered the song and there was a Darth Vader version, a parody called “Vanilla Snow,” and a profusion of other send-ups. Soon he was invited onto Jimmy Kimmel (twice) and featured on Opie & Anthony, right after a segment about whale sperm. “I inadvertently became an icon of viral video success,” Zonday says.
Face-to-face, he comes across a bit like a facsimile of a person, as if a robot or alien has not quite nailed its impersonation of a human being—the eyes excessively round and unblinking, the neck and shoulders too stiff, a grin as broad as the Cheshire cat’s. And then there’s the impossible voice, the Paul Robeson bass emerging from the Emmanuel Lewis face, which Zonday uses to say things like: “Mutatis mutandis, look at Nielsen ratings, a lot of these top YouTubers are getting results that are numerically higher than television and movies.” He’s well aware of his oddities, what he calls his “distinct brand.” But where Hollywood is “eugenic” in its relentless pursuit of a specific type or look, Zonday says, YouTube allows unique artists to find their audience.
Until now, the trajectory of viral stardom has generally involved a spike of fame followed by a plunge into near-total anonymity. And from one perspective, Zonday fits that pattern: You haven’t seen him onKimmel lately, after all. But under the radar, he has figured out how to make his semi-celebrity pay, earning more money each successive year from the scores of videos he continues to post on YouTube. Like many of the other 20,000 content creators who have been invited to join the site’s Partner Program, he has essentially become a full-time YouTuber, a Google company man. Although partners are contractually prohibited from revealing how much they earn from the ads running on their YouTube channels, independent estimates put Zonday’s take at between $24,000 and $72,000 a year, based on a Google ad rate of $1 to $3 per thousand views (his videos are seen roughly 2 million times a month). And beyond that, Zonday says, he is able to match what he receives from Google by promoting products in his videos and by uploading advertisements himself, a capability enabled in 2009. Without anyone noticing, so-called “Internet fame” has started adding up to real money.
Perhaps inevitably, the nucleus of YouTube fame-seekers has migrated to Los Angeles. Hundreds of top-tier partners have left high-speed Internet connections in hometowns everywhere and settled here, on the periphery of the traditional entertainment industry. But for these viral stars, many of whom already pull in six figures a year from their channels, this move isn’t about getting their faces seen by studio heads or their voices heard by A&R reps. Instead, they come to work with one another. They room together, appear in one another’s videos, lend each other equipment and skills: camera work for special effects, say, or video editing for a song. Several have pooled resources to create mini networks, and an ancillary advertising business has materialized whereby YouTube luminaries are matched with companies scrambling to reach a young audience and build a presence online.
