TORONTO – Pop star Cody Simpson wishes more of his fans – and he’s got millions of them around the world – actually bought his music.
“It hurts a little bit,” Simpson admitted Sunday, minutes before an autograph signing session in Toronto. “When you make music, you work hard on it and it definitely hurts to have people just rip it.”
The Australian singer, who’s a month shy of his 16th birthday, has 3.7 million followers on Twitter, 3.6 million “likes” on Facebook and a YouTube channel that has had 149 million video views.
Yet Simpson doesn’t show up in the top 200 albums or singles charts on iTunes in Canada and his album Paradise peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard 200 chart.
“It’s not the best,” Simpson said of his generation’s habit of downloading music for free. “It’s the art that you’ve worked on for days and months at a time.”
Simpson said he tries to look at the bright side. “It can lead to other things. They could listen to new music and want to come see you perform live, and stuff like that,” he said. “It all comes around.”
Simpson, who shot to fame after being discovered on YouTube, is highly skilled at harnessing the power of the Internet and social media. He can’t even guess how much time he spends online.
Simpson said he recognizes the responsibility of having so many young people hanging on every word he tweets.
“Obviously, having that many followers, you’ve got to be careful with what you post,” he said. “It’s an awesome outlet to be able to connect to my fans and chat to them and answer their questions and retweet them
and stuff.
“It’s really important that I’m always on there connecting with them and I want to have that personal relationship with my fans.”
These fans have posted hundreds of photos and drawings of Simpson as well as fictional stories about the young star – and gossip about his romantic life.
Simpson insisted he doesn’t regularly Google himself to see what others are writing about him but, he said, “I definitely read all my tweets and all that stuff because I like to see what my fans think.”
The singer said one day he will pay it forward by giving a break to a young singer who’s using YouTube in hopes of getting noticed.
“I haven’t really come across anyone like that yet,” admitted Simpson. “I’m really working at establishing myself first – doing me for a little awhile and then, you never know what could happen. It’s always
good to find someone new and give them the same opportunity.”
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