Can you believe that it has already been 5 years since the Jonas Brother’s first video Mandy debuted on TRL? The groundbreaking 3 part video helped to launch the career of the world’s favorite brothers.
Former Columbia Records label head Steve Greenberg reflects, “I’m happy to commemorate the 5th anniversary of Jonas Brothers appearing on MTV’s “TRL” program to debut their breakthrough music video Mandy.
The Mandy video was a landmark in so many ways: First of all, it was a video presented in three chapters, with each chapter ending in a cliff-hanger. A new chapter was released every three weeks until all three chapters had been shown. This was the first time anything like this had been done with a music video. To make it more fun, we added opening and closing credits, and recaps and previews at the beginning and end of each chapter.
What really made it a pioneering effort, however, was the fact that we distributed the videos on a widget which fans put up on their MySpace pages. This was back in the early days of social media, and no artist had ever made their music available on an embeddable, updatable widget before the Jonas Brothers’ Mandy. Once a fan embedded the widget, they automatically received each new chapter as it was released.
This may not sound so exciting today, but believe me, back in ’06 it was a real technological breakthrough and people were astounded at how successful it was.
Over the course of the three-part series, the videos were viewed a total of 20 million times, with 60 thousand fans embedding the widget on their page & just through the “Vote Here For TRL” button on the widget, Mandy made it into the Top 5 on MTV’s countdown—without any radio play!
At that moment, you could really sense the music world begin to shift, as old media made way for the new. And of course, upon hearing their self-composed Mandy, music fans had no doubt that this release heralded the arrival of a formidable musical force in the Jonas Brothers.
Get your answers in quick! Contest ends this Friday at noon PST.
Please feel free to engage with me further on this subject on twitter, where I’m @steviegpro.”
Along with the Jonas Brothers’, Mandy Van Duyne’s life would never be the same. “I can’t believe it is the 5 year anniversary of the Jonas Brothers “Mandy video”. Time goes by so quickly! The JB writing Mandy and making a video was one of the highlights of my life. It has given me so many amazing opportunities and I have met so many awesome people because of it. I’m so thankful to Kevin, Joseph and Nicholas for the video, it truly is an honor. Thanks for the memories”!
To commemorate this monumental video, WE ARE GIVING AWAY 5 SIGNED COPIES OF THE JONAS BROTHER’S FIRST ALBUM, IT’S ABOUT TIME. In order to be eligible to win, you must be a registered Cambio user and leave your answers as a comment below. We will randomly choose 5 winners who have answered the questions correctly.
Answer the following questions in one post. 5 randomly selected winners with correct answers will be awarded a rare collector’s item ’It’s About Time’ signed CD.
1) Where were you the first time you heard or saw “Mandy”?
2) What track # is “Mandy” on ’It’s About Time’?
3) Who directed the video series for “Mandy”?
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