When we asked you to Yodel like you mean it, you delivered!

After handing Yahoo!’s signature yodel over to the people – you whole-heartedly responded – by uploading more than a whopping 21,000 yodels to our online Yodel Studio! Each yodel has its own personality as unique as each of you.  There are hip-hop yodels, country yodels, rock n’ roll yodels, Bollywood yodels… I think you get the point.

Out of all of the yodels submitted, who really rocked the mic?  Based on number of views, we’ve selected the top 3 yodels from each market.  Now YOU can help us choose who will go to the next level and take it PLATINUM! Vote daily for your favorites!

U.S. Finalists:

Tiffany Jo from Arizona – Yodeling since she was five years old, “I choose to participate because I enjoy singing and yodeling. I thought it would be a great opportunity to do what I love.”

Carlo from Arizona – New to yodeling but been singing for a lifetime, “I searched through most of the songs that were available to use as background music until I found the one that brought out the most emotion out of me.”

Christopher from Oklahoma – “What inspired my Yodel was hearing all the Yahoo! Yodels in the past, and wanting to do something a little bit different! I decided to add a little bit of ME in my Yodel!”

UK Finalists:

Katherine
Hajar
James

And representing India:

Nishant
Ankitaa
Ayesha

One winning yodel will represent each country (US, UK and India) and will be featured on one of the world’s largest stages: Yahoo!’s homepage!  So declare yourself, “rock the vote” or in this case, yodel it out – in short, vote soon as polls close on November 15 (11:59pm PT) and the winner will be announced on November 16th! What are you waiting for, vote for your favorite yodel now!

If you passed through midtown Manhattan yesterday, you might have thought that yodeling was a hip new genre busting out on the music charts. But the phenomenon was just the Yahoo! Yodel Studio.

Crowds of starstruck pedestrians formed around a recording studio that we erected overnight in Times Square as yodels echoed through the canyons of the city. We invited anyone and everyone to come inside and give us their best interpretation of the Yahoo! yodel. What was at stake? The potential fame and bragging rights of having their yodel featured on the Yahoo! Homepage and in our new advertising campaign.

We camped out on Military Island for 12 hours in a brick building that included a dressing room with costume gear, a rehearsal room with gold records on the wall, and a state-of-the-art recording studio. Celebrities were on hand to mentor yodelers — Jewel, Pete Wentz, LeAnn Rimes, Randy Jackson, and Rob Cavallo, chief creative officer of Warner Music Group and one of the world’s most highly acclaimed music producers. (Jewel said her dad was so proud that all those years of coaching her to yodel had finally paid off.) Kimberly Caldwell of American Idol fame was our tireless emcee and we even had America’s Got Talent’s Manuela “The Yodeling Dominatrix” Horn to help rally brave souls. And house band musicians — with many Grammys among them — sat atop the marquee of the Hard Rock Cafe (Hollywood Squares-style), ready to give a live riff for each yodeler. We heard rap yodels, bluegrass yodels, punk yodels, funk yodels, hip hop yodels, the list goes on. We even had two Cirque du Soleil performers stop by for a rendition. And they were all projected on the Jumbotron for the crowd to enjoy (or, at least, be amused by).

The last time we sought the best new Yahoo! yodeler, back in 2003, we ended up launching the singing career of a 9-year-old girl named Taylor Ware. Yesterday, one lucky performer (pictured above) — a foot messenger whose boss told her she could come perform before she delivered her last package of the day — caught the eye of Pete Wentz and Rob Cavallo, who spent extra time coaching her and left with her MySpace info and email address. Remember the name Chanese Elife, people — she might have a bright future ahead!

We also held events in London and Mumbai because, you know, yodeling knows no geographic bounds. The top winners for each country will be crowned on November 15th, based on which videos receive the most views. So head over to the gallery and check out the contenders. You’ll help them find an audience of more than 500 million people.

For more on the event, read Lyndsey Parker’s Yahoo! Music blog posts, browse photos in our Flickr photostream (slideshow below), and watch video highlights from our NY, London, and Mumbai events:

Ya-hooooo!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

While yodeling originated in the Swiss and Austrian Alps as a way to communicate between mountain peaks, many of you associate the yodel with Yahoo! – or, should I say Ya – HOOOOO! It is, after all, one of our most beloved and recognized assets.

Today, we’re giving the Yahoo! yodel back to the people with the launch of Yodel Studio, a global casting call for the world’s best yodels. Yodelers who take us up on this challenge will personalize and reinterpret our yodel, competing for a chance to be featured in Yahoo!’s new global advertising campaign and on one of the world’s largest stages: the Yahoo! homepage. Your yodel will also be heard through the donation Yahoo! will make to local and global charities of your choice for each yodel submitted (up to $130,000).

To kick this whole effort off in style, Yahoo! is hosting live Yodel Studio events today in New York’s Times Square, London’s Covent Garden and tomorrow at Mumbai’s High Street Phoenix Mall. Professional recording studios have been built in each location with celebrities on hand to coach yodelers. Jewel, Pete Wentz, LeAnn Rimes, and Randy Jackson will join us in New York with super producer Rob Cavallo; Pixie Lott and the X Factor’s Sinitta will be in London; and Bollywood singer Shankar Mahadevan and musical artists VJ Nikhil Chinappa and Shaa’ir + Func will mentor in Mumbai.

And if you need some yodel inspiration – might I suggest channeling your inner Jewel?

So get yodeling soon – the deadline to submit your yodel online is November 8! Read more here.

Brian Mullin
Senior Director, Buzz Marketing

In the two months we’ve been on Twitter, no tweet has gotten more replay than the one about the yodel that’s hidden in our homepage (just click the exclamation point in our logo and see for yourself). Clearly the sound of the Yahoo! yodel still makes people really happy. Which got me thinking about Wylie Gustafson, the guy who started it all back in 1996.

Wylie’s not some commercial voiceover talent. He’s the real deal — a true singing cowboy. He’s got the belt buckle, hat, ranch, and 20 horses to prove it. I caught up with Wylie to find out how on Earth he got his start in yodeling, how Yahoo! found him for our first ad campaign, how life has changed since then, what he’s doing now, and what it’s like to be the world’s most recognized yodeler. You can read a full transcript of the interview here. But for you multitasking, RSS feed-scanning, I-only-have-time-for-300-words-or-less types, here are some highlights:

• Wylie yodeled for brands like Mitsubishi, Taco Bell, Porsche, and Miller Light before creating his 3-note hit for Yahoo! in 1996.
• When our ad agency brought him into the recording studio, he came up with 10 different yodels of the name Yahoo! in a matter five minutes.
• Wylie yodels for a living with his “Wylie & the Wild West” band.
• Wylie’s yodeling notoriety has landed him gigs with A Prairie Home Companion, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. He has appeared on the Grand Ol Opry more than 50 times.
• Wylie trains cutting (or cattle) horses on a ranch near Dusty, Washington (population: 11).
• His dad was a Montana cowboy and ranch veterinarian and yodeled on horseback.
• Wylie learned to yodel from a reel-to-reel tape his aunt received from an Austrian ski team.
• Wylie and Yahoo! settled a lawsuit in 2002 after we inadvertently used his yodel in a national ad without the proper contract.
• Wylie toured the country as the emcee for the national Yahoo! Yodel Challenge in 2003. The winner, via write-in submission, was Taylor Ware, a 9-year-old who went on to becoming a finalist on “America’s Got Talent.”

And, yes, we’ve sent him his very own Insta-Yodel button. No home is complete without it.

Here’s Wylie in action, singing his most popular live song, about some guy who made it big by yodeling for a little Internet company in the mid-90s. And you can learn how to yodel like Wylie here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo by Bill Watts