About a few weeks back, world-renowned Record Label Atlantic Records signed an artist by the name of ‘Bhad Bhabhie’. Who is that you ask? Remember the teenager who went onto Dr.Phil and coined the famous term “Cash me outside how bout dat” and became an instant Internet sensation afterward? Yes. Danielle Bregoli also was known as Bhad Bhabhie has recently released two songs on YouTube titled ‘These Heaux’ and ‘Hi Bich’. Both of them have a combined view count of 66 million. 66 MILLION! Now, go ahead and listen to both of those songs and come back to the debate for today’s article.

Are YouTube stars really Musicians?

YouTube has had a long history of showcasing and creating talent from all parts of the world. Since it’s inception, it has given us countless underground musicians and performers that have actually done very well for themselves and have been able to show their online hype in real situations. Then there’s the latter – the high production, mainstream-friendly auto-tuned YouTube stars that call themselves ‘musicians’. If you ask anyone in the Audio Industry, Auto-Tune is something that stirs up quite a debate. In order to understand the whole musician debate, it is really important to understand this debate.

What is Auto-Tune?

The technology of Auto-Tune as we know it today was created in 1998 by Dr. Andy Hildrebrand. The first song to ever use the technology was the Billboard hit “Believe” by Cher. For a long period of time, Auto-Tune was actually used as an effect or an instrument, famously by the artist T-Pain. In the last 10 years or so, Auto-Tune has slowly come into the forefront for replacing singers that sound bad/off-key and making them sound good. Almost every single pop artist is guilty of using auto-tune. Whilst the early 2000’s were plagued with pre-recorded tracks and miming, singers clearly singing off tune live has become the new plague in the music industry. Everyone from Taylor Swift to Justin Beiber, Demi Lovato etc have been victims of situations where their voices sound too perfect on record, and come nowhere close to that quality live. That being said, it is also important to understand the difference between Auto-Tune and Pitch Correction.

What is Pitch Correction?

Pitch Correction is an audio editing tool that is used largely to correct vocals to a small degree. An off note here and there in a 3-4 minute performance. Pitch Correction is commonly used in most genres and usually in situations where artists have not had too much time in the studio and the tracks have had to only be corrected slightly in post-production. Pitch Correction does not make a bad singer sound good. Pitch Correction sounds much more natural and less robotic than auto-tune. The biggest reason behind that is that Pitch Correction works on the algorithm of ‘cents’ rather than direct notes. Auto-Tune pitches vocals directly to the perfect note and makes the vocals sound more like a sampled keyboard. Pitch Correction only shifts the cent of a note up and down to a specified degree before it goes into Auto-Tune territory.

Why is it so important?

So let’s ask us for a minute. Why is it so important that some artist use auto-tune in order to make their records sound ‘perfect’? Well, the problem arises when they call themselves ‘musicians’. Let’s not even get into the concept of what involves being a musician because every so-called pop musician would fail at calling themselves one. Just because the last record of a popular pop artist had his/her name on the front doesn’t negate the fact that all the music was made by various ghostwriters, including the lyrics and the vocal melodies. And this is an issue because these are the artists that are reaching the No.1 position in the charts and influencing the way music is bought, sold and accessed. Their content has influence. For example, most recently, there have been rounds of Hip-Hop ‘Diss Tracks’ all over YouTube that are being done by YouTube Vloggers that have millions and millions of hits. This content is hampering the potential of what the real Rap or Hip-Hop musicians and artists can achieve.

Musician or Entertainer? | Are You As Good LIVE as you are behind the camera?

For me, this argument boils down to one thing and one thing only. I consider you to be a musician if you write your songs, take the time in the studio to actually perform them well without machines doing the job for you over a point where it actually sounds like a machine, and performing that live rather than miming it or auto-tuning it. But, if you are a YouTube Star and you want to put out some music, go ahead. Call yourself an Entertainer, because well you are entertaining people with the content you’re making. It is very important to make this distinction. Kids growing up should not think that if they want to be a musician - that is the level they need to strive to. It is something that the Record Labels are using in order to gain back their influence and power in a world where a real musician sitting at home can showcase his/her talents on a powerful medium such as YouTube.