Dixie D’Amelio’s highly awaited music video for her single “Someone to Blame” has officially been released.
A pop artist who straddles genres including EDM-lite and sensitive anthems, Dixie’s music career took off after signing with L.A. Reid’s HitCo in 2020. She has already amassed over 650 million streams. Her debut single “Be Happy” has proved a smash hit in particular, with 300 million streams by itself.
“Someone to Blame” is the third single to drop from her June-released debut album A Letter to Me. Here, D’Amelio demonstrates an expanded range of flavors and dives deep into her emotions. The previous two singles from the album, “Wild” and “A Letter to Me,” both featured more traditional music videos, which were directed by Darrin Bush and Megan Gamez respectively.
“Someone to Blame” is an innovative production, executed in partnership with Lightricks, and it features many of her fans throughout the video. The fan-submitted clips appear in mirror reflections and in scenes Dixie is watching herself, making the video into a type of audience collaboration. From a music marketing perspective, this approach has surely added to community anticipation for the video’s release, which makes sense given the D’Amelio family’s rise to fame via social media.
Not long ago, it would have been difficult to coordinate and plan this type of video, but the new “templates” feature in Lightricks’s Videoleap app simplifies the process. Dixie announced the plan on July 5 with a campaign across her social channels, where she invited her fans to submit their content for the chance to be included.
The process was simple and ultimately led to over 100,000 fan entries, according to Dixie’s publicity representatives. All fans needed to do was download Lightricks’s Videoleap app, search for her and open one of her video templates. These templates essentially allow creators to give others the structure of their creation, so that they can replace the video content with a recording of themselves.
It’s a new way to trigger a trend. Once her fans had finished their versions, they just needed to post on social media and include the tag #Videoleap.
It’s likely other music artists with strong social followings will want to try variations of this concept for themselves as a way to give back to their community. The fans who were fortunate enough to have been selected won’t forget appearing in their favorite artist’s video any time soon.
Dixie is a trailblazer in this instance, because of her close relationship with Lightricks. She and the rest of the D’Amelio family are investors and strategic partners in the company. This brings together social media’s most followed household and a multi-billion-dollar startup known for building the tools that power the creator economy.
Lightricks has produced some of the most popular apps of all time, including Facetune, which has featured in the top five paid iOS apps for seven years in a row. The company’s spokespeople have shared that their apps have been downloaded over 650 million times so far. While the company’s reputation has been built on photo and video editing apps, they have expanded their repertoire in an attempt to become a one-stop-shop for the creator economy.
It’s become more common for well-known celebrities to choose to embed themselves in a company rather than simply advertise for third parties. This strategy aligns incentives to increase the potential benefits for both creators and brands.
For example, in 2013, Jay-Z is reported to have invested $2 million in Uber, a company which is now worth over 10 times what it was at the time.
Although she is only 20 years old, Dixie is far more than a pop star, thanks to a remarkably diversified media portfolio. She is most famous as a social media personality with over 100 million followers across platforms, which makes her one of the most recognizable faces on the internet. Alongside other members of her household – including her kid sister Charli, one of TikTok’s original mega-influencers – Dixie appears in The D’Amelio Family, a reality series which has been renewed for a second season by Hulu.
Dixie also has her own fashion brand in partnership with Hollister, and as a model, she has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Paper and V Magazine.
In the context of her pop career, Dixie has chosen to share her journey with fans via her blog on The247, a publication she helped launch with Lightricks as a platform for inspiring ambitious content creators. Here, her content includes behind-the-scenes reflections on the experience of recording her album and also her thoughts regarding concert appearances.
Dixie recently concluded a series of live performances on Big Time Rush’s summer tour, where she was the opening act. As part of the tour, she sang in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Dixie has a bright future ahead of her and has always made clear her desire to give back to her fans. The decision to include them in her “Someone to Blame” music video epitomizes this attitude and shows why her following is so passionate and loyal to her.
