From Romania to Thailand — One Story of a Viral Song

If your musical tastes are rooted firmly in the English-speaking world, then the chances are that you’ve never heard of Romanian pop singer Matteo. However, one of his songs managed to traverse continental boundaries, achieving the kind of extraordinary success that many lesser-known artists only dream about.

The Making of Matteo

Born in Bucharest in 1984, his parents and grandfather all had their own ideas about what to name baby Matteo. Because they couldn’t reach an agreement, they ended up giving him all of their chosen monikers, christening the newborn Matei Anton Aurel Eugen Ioan Florentin, along with his last name of Vasiliu.

Tragically, Matei lost his father at a very young age after the elder Vasiliu was shot dead during the violence of the Romanian Revolution in 1989. The incident left Matei with a lasting impression of his father as a hero for standing up to the Communist regime. His death also meant that Matei inherited his father’s extensive collection of reggae and funk vinyl, which would later inform his musical inspirations. Perhaps his long string of given names also factored into his decision to adopt a far simpler stage handle, performing under the alias Matteo.

As a pop singer, Matteo first achieved recognition within his home country in 2006, after a successful collaboration with established artist Loredana Groza. He went on to participate in several other collaborations, later starting to release solo material from 2010. His singles including Lovaman (2010) and Push It (2012) achieved success on the local Romanian airplay charts.

In 2013, he released a song called Panama, a ridiculously catchy earworm of a dance-pop tune. If you don’t speak Romanian, then the song title is probably the only word of the lyrics you’d understand. Four years, eight thousand kilometers and half a dozen time zones later, something unlikely happened.

Panamania Hits Asia

Somehow, Panama made it onto a Chinese video-sharing site with people sharing clips of themselves dancing to it. Some Thai influencers picked it up and took videos of themselves doing a series of dance moves which involve making a “Z” in the air, doing the hula twice and finishing up with a twerk. It’s worth mentioning that these moves never actually featured in Matteo’s original video for Panama — they were developed by the Asian influencers.

The song achieved viral fame across Thailand and China. Prior to the song going viral, the official Panama video had around eight million views on YouTube. At the time of writing, it’s racked up more than 110 million views and over 34 thousand comments, most of which are written in Thai. Search for the hashtag #Panamadance on YouTube or Instagram, and you’ll find dozens of clips of young Asians dancing against various backdrops.

Panama’s viral success led to Matteo touring Asia in 2018. A YouTube video shows fans meeting him at the airport, demonstrating their impressive twerking capabilities to him right there in the arrivals hall. It’s unintentionally hilarious, as a bewildered Matteo clearly has no idea how to do the moves himself. He tries to imitate the fans as they’re dancing around him and eventually gives up in favor of enjoying the spectacle.

In April 2019, the official Matteo YouTube channel released a further video featuring dozens of clips of Asian people dancing to Panama. Police, military officials, wedding guests, and a sports arena full of people are all performing the now well-rehearsed moves in perfect coordination.

Twerking Hard for the Money

The success that Matteo achieved with Panama could only have happened in the age of digital music. If you took a vacation in Thailand during 2017 or 2018, then there’s every chance you’d have heard Panama as it was played virtually on repeat throughout bars, restaurants, shops and dance clubs all over the country.

However, as much as Matteo has been able to capitalize on some of this success with a tour and streaming revenues, it’s also a reasonably safe bet that many plays of the Panama song have gone unattributed. Both writer and publisher are due to receive royalty payments from every single play of the song. Even if all these royalties are captured (which seems unlikely), it could take years to get the payments through to the rights holders.

Matteo’s story is an unusual one, but unfortunately, the story of artists and rights holders struggling to get paid for their work is far more common. Like all musicians, Matteo and his record company depend on performance rights organizations (PROs), which face the impossible task of monitoring plays of every song, all over the world.

Utopia exists to overcome this impossibility. By harnessing the potential of big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence, each play of a song can be heard, recorded and attributed in real-time. Artists like Matteo don’t need to wait years for their payments or go without them altogether. After all, nobody can pay the bills with YouTube views and twerky dance moves alone.

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