Singer leads crowd of new Web stars on YouTube

By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. singer-songwriter Terra Naomi is a star of a new generation -- finding fame on the Internet.

On Monday, Naomi, who studied classical voice at the University of Michigan and has been writing songs for seven years, was among the winners of the first YouTube Video awards, picking up the honor best music video with "Say It's Possible" which soon will be released as her first single.

Other winners included OKGo, who won the title most creative with a video called "Here it Goes Again," which has four men in the group dancing on treadmills. Digitalfilmmaker's "Ask a Ninja" won the award for best series.

But Naomi's story of Web fame reads like an old Hollywood yarn that now seems to happen rapidly on lightning-fast community sites on the Web.

A year ago Naomi was struggling to carve out a career as a musician when she decided to try her luck on a new online site -- YouTube -- where users can post their own videos.

Her timing was impeccable. As YouTube's audience soared after its February 2006 launch, so did Naomi's following and within months U.S. and British record labels were chasing her.

Los Angeles-based Naomi, who signed with Island Records in London in December, is stunned by her fast-track to fame. She is moving to London, and her first album is due in June.

"I was really tired of going out on the road. It was grueling. Sometimes I would drive for seven or eight hours and end up playing for 20 people," Naomi told Reuters.

"I decided I was not going to go out on the road again but film nightly concerts from my apartment," she added.

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

The career turning point came when she posted a video of "Say It's Possible" on YouTube in June. Since then, the song has been viewed more than 5 million times.

"All of a sudden it just took off and there were people copying it and posting their own versions. Now there are about 200 cover versions of the song in Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Chinese," she said.

Naomi, who declined to give her age other than between 22 and 90, is among a breed of stars to emerge from YouTube, which was bought for $1.65 billion last year by Google Inc. and dominates the user-generated online video market.

Students Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, aka Smosh, both aged 19 from Sacramento in California, have become the second most subscribed channel on YouTube for their spoof music videos and comedy skits, building up a large cult following.

They won YouTube's award for best comedy with their "Smosh Short 2: Stranded." While they have yet to earn enough money to make a living, the pair are paid for product placements on their videos and were sponsored to host a contest on YouTube.