DIGITAL TAKEOVER: YOUTUBE CURATOR TAMMY SZU

photo KATHRYNA HANCOCK

Tammy Szu didn’t mean to become a YouTube channel sensation. She’d lost her iPod, and the obscure, then-unknown musical picks on her playlist weren’t to be found on the YouTube-verse. So Tammy decided to upload her own tracks in order to help her study while away from her PC at home. A mere accident then became a precipitous stumble into the world of audio cultivation. More than 45,000 subscribers later, the 24-year-old has become a respected authority in up-and-coming, underground electronic music acts. Just how did Tammy and others like her become trusted figures whose curatorial prowess gained them access to an elusive world in which artists now came to them for a “big break”?

Tammy didn’t always listen to electronic music. She grew up listening to underground hip-hop, and her first playlists were on the now-defunct imeem. Then she dated a DJ, who happened to introduce her to electronic music. “Even though I got introduced to electronic music through trance and other mainstream stuff, I always just liked weird stuff,” Tammy laughs. “I’d show my music to my friends and they didn’t like it so I’d just be like, ‘F*ck you, I’ll listen to what I want.’”

 

That fearless embrace of the strange and obscure has undoubtedly been the formula for Tammy’s success. She began her acoustic relationship with YouTube in 2009, and though her initial selections were slightly haphazard, her channel has since become more purposefully crafted. The evolution of her channel includes “German and weird tectonic stuff, some European shit,” and nu-disco, after which she started uploading music with photos of stylized fashion editorials as video backgrounds, because her tracks sounded like the melodies she associated with runway shows.

Acts like Kastle, Pelican Fly, Sinjin Hawke and Morri$ soon began reaching out to Tammy, sending her exclusive tracks after receiving attention on her blog. But don’t mistake her for being easily swayed. She purposefully makes an effort to help out artists who aren’t yet big, “who are struggling to get up there.” She cites DJ Paypal as an example, “I’ve been uploading his stuff for a while and he just got signed to LuckyMe.” The record label LuckyMe happens to be the home of veritable electronic acts Jacques Greene, TNGHT, and Machinedrum.

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See more of Tammy’s eclectic music uploads on her channel.

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