Last week, Dixie D’Amelio announced through her formidable social media profiles that the music video for her upcoming single “Someone to Blame” from her debut album A Letter to Me will feature video content submitted by her fans.
The album was released on June 10, and it already has two singles with traditional music videos, “A Letter to Me” and “Wild.” The creative approach with fan-generated content for the next video involves using the Templates feature of the editing app Videoleap. The feature allows creators to provide the structure of their videos to be reused by others at the click of a button.
Through this mechanism, those who wish to take part in the new fan activation campaign only need to download the app, use one of Dixie D’Amelio’s templates and post it with the “Videoleap” tag.
Dixie D’Amelio is currently touring the United States to promote her album and has already played at venues such as Madison Square Garden in New York City and the Andrew J. Brady Music Center in Cincinnati. There are over 20 performances in the tour altogether, and the full itinerary is available through Songkick. Jacksonville (July 19), Miami (July 22) and Atlanta (July 24) are all to come in the second half of the month.
Alongside her music career, Dixie D’Amelio is one of the world’s foremost TikTok personalities, with almost 60 million followers and a further 25 million followers on Instagram. This presence helped her win Favorite Social Music Star at the 2022 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards.
It is also anticipated that there will be significant engagement from her fans, because of the enticing nature of the opportunity. It could be a model which other music stars with large social media followings replicate to show appreciation to their fans.
Dixie D’Amelio is the first musician to make newsworthy use of the feature because of her family’s relationship with the parent company Lightricks. As announced in February 2022, the D’Amelio family holds equity in the multi-billion dollar company and acts as strategic advisors. This partnership brought together what the New York Times calls “The First Family of Social Media” and the world-leading builder of creator tools, with over 500 million downloads.
Through this relationship, it was Dixie’s sister, Charli D’Amelio, who officially launched the Templates feature at VidCon 2022.
Interestingly, Dixie D’Amelio has chosen to not heavily promote her album through her social media and instead focus on serving the fans. It points to a wider trend in how she is leveraging her relationship with Lightricks. Through their online publication, The 247, she shares behind-the-scenes insights into her life. It appears as the fan participation in her music video is more about giving back to her loyal audience and diversifying her business interests rather than a music promotion tactic.
If the trend takes off, then she will be leading the new era of two-way interaction between musicians and their fans. At the least, it seems there will be some delighted people who will be able to watch themselves in their favorite musician’s video when it is released.
