[FA Worldmusic] Over a million hits!

[Ian Menzies]

Another remarkable tale from the internet. I recently caught this news
snippet from the Northside label....
 
The catchy "Ieva's Polka" by
<http://www.noside.com/Catalog/CatalogArtist_01.asp?Action=Get&Artist_ID=24>
Loituma has become a cult hit on the internet. Originally spurred by the
posting of a short, looping video featuring an anime girl swinging a leek (!
... see it  <http://dojo.fi/~rancid/loituma__.swf> here), suddenly many
home-made short videos using the tune as a soundtrack are popping up on
video sites like
<http://www.youtube.com/results?search=Loituma&search_type=search_videos&sea
rch=Search> youtube.com. 
 
Needless to say, I had to go have a look.....I was stunned when I saw that
the various versions of the track posted on youtube had amassed well over 1
million hits - in fact a clip that is just the band performing the track
live is posted at least twice - and the combined views of those 2 posts
alone are over 800,000.
 
As a comparative reference, if you search U2 on youtube, most of the videos
posted their have had about 20,000 hits....
 
What has it meant for Loituma's career and record sales? I don't know (maybe
Rob Simmonds can tell us??), but this kind of exposure for Finish folk music
is inconceivable in the non-virtual world.
 
Here's a link to the youtube page in case the above ones don't work
http://tinyurl.com/erdlq
 
Ian 

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