Wired magazine has an interesting article about how the internet has affected the career of Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al is impacted by two trends from the internet:

1. Fragmenting of the market into small segments (Long Tail?)
2. A surplus of amateur parodies on You Tube

as well as the fact that the few mass acts that exist seem to be self-parodies (e.g. Jessica Simpson, Brittany, Kevin F.).

Read it here:

 http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-10/ff_weirdal

A blogger suggests ways that Weird Al could use the Internet’s potential for crowdsourcing to stay ahead of trends: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/?p=452

Weird Al has embraced the new media, releasing his first parody on iTunes two weeks ago. Digital release allows him to parody a song while it is still topping the charts…