“Someone to Blame” will be released soon
Dixie D’Amelio announced last week she will be taking an unconventional approach to the music video for her next single, “Someone to Blame,” from her hit debut album A Letter to Me. Her fans will be able to create tribute videos using templates provided by the artist and upload them to TikTok and Instagram using the tag #Videoleap. D’Amelio and her team will then select a collection of these to appear in the official music video.
It’s an ambitious project, as fan-generated content for a star the size of D’Amelio hasn’t yet truly been explored. There is sure to be a huge number of submissions from her combined 80 million-plus following across social media platforms.
Traditionally, musical artists use social media as a one-directional broadcast channel, sharing updates from their careers and lives so that fans can stay engaged. Some artists have experimented with user-generated content (UGC) campaigns on social media before, such as when Clean Bandit built buzz around its 2020 single “Tick Tock” by encouraging fans to incorporate sound bytes and dance routines from the video in their own posts, but this could be the first major release where UGC is being incorporated into the official music video.
As a savvy media personality who came to pop stardom after blowing up on TikTok, D’Amelio knows full well how important the social interaction aspects of social media are.
The “Someone to Blame” campaign represents the next step in a series of new cross-media initiatives for the D’Amelio family, with Charli having recently launched a fragrance and season two of The D’Amelio Show set to drop on Hulu in the months ahead. Marc announced the D’Amelio Huskies Collective in May as a way to help University of Connecticut athletes develop their personal brands on social media.
This is also a big step in Dixie D’Amelio’s growing relationship with Lightricks, the app developer behind Videoleap and Facetune. Having announced earlier this year that the family acquired an equity stake in the tech unicorn, Dixie has since launched her own Link in Bio template and been active as a columnist on Lightricks’s The247 blog for creators, where she has chronicled her journey as a pop star while recording A Letter to Me.
The album was released early last month, and the first two singles were “Wild” and the title track. Both were released with traditional cinematic music videos that have gained traction on YouTube. “A Letter to Me” was directed by Megan Gamez, whereas Kevin Henry and Kyle Nolan took the lead for “Wild.”
D’Amelio can be seen this summer with Big Time Rush as they trek across North America on their Forever Tour. D’Amelio is a Big Time Rush superfan and is supporting the tour through August 20th.
