Mormon Pop: Do you YouTube?

So we all know YouTube is taking over the world, right? Google paid a whopping $1.65 billion for the social phenomenon in late 2006. Weve all taken part in the guilty pleasure. Did you see that Paul Potts, the cell-phone-salesman-turned-opera-singer (20 million views), turned up at the top of Time Magazines Top 10 Live Performances of 2007?

Amateur or professional, music videos are still a major force in the music industry and have been since the early days of MTV. Both independent and major label artists use YouTube directly or indirectly. For example, 80s rockers Van Halen recently reunited (kind of), and videos of the bands pre-tour rehearsals were leaked to YouTube to create pre-tour buzz.

So with all this hoopla and the overnight sensations created by YouTube, what kind of presence do Mormon music artists have on the site? Well, I spent some time recently searching through the good, the bad and the ugly of YouTube to see if I could find anything LDS on there (someones gotta do it, right?).

I first did a quick search of some of my LDS music-making friends. I then did kind of an every nth random search from a list of the 2007 Pearl Award winners — sort of the Mormon version of The Grammys. While more than half came up not found, there were also a few hits. Theres a fun performance of Alex Boye doing "Anything Impossible" (and several other posts). The Mormon Tabernacle Choir even has its own rehearsal video of The Sound of Music and a bunch of clips lifted from television shows. And check out all the waving cell phones in this finale from a Peter Breinholt/Sam Payne/David Tolk concert at BYU-Idaho.

There were a few others. But still not much as far as actual artists go.

One trend I did notice was a number amateur inspirational or missionary-style slide shows with LDS music as the soundtrack (to be honest, Im not exactly sure of the legality of all this — but isnt this sort of what YouTube is all about?). A few examples: Michael Mclean backing a slide show based on "I Cannot Find My Way" from "The Forgotten Carols," another featuring Kenneth Copes "Never a Better Hero" and another with music from Jenny Oaks Baker.