Nickelodeon released the soundtrack for iCarly Music From and Inspired by the Hit TV Show. It includes a massive 35 tracks but don’t be fooled , half of those are just short clips of the cast talking about the songs on the album. I somewhat expected Jennette McCurdy to be on one of the tracks, guess not every single actress is being pushed into singing after all.

The rest are songs but only five of those include the star of the show Miranda Cosgrove even though the cover would suggest a bigger involvement. I’ll be focusing on her contributions seeing most of the other songs are by better known bands and are just stuck on there to fill the tracklist.

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Miranda Cosgrove has signed on with Columbia Reords for a record deal. How long, for what kind of albums and for how many albums it is, is unknown so far. Only known is that Columbia will release an album called iCarly Playlist on June 10th this year.

For people getting their hopes up; Miranda will only sing four of the fourteen tracks on the album. The rest will be by other artists like Avril Lavigne and Good Charlotte. One of the four songs from Miranda will be the theme song for the show and three new songs.

This was just a matter of time really; the signing young actresses to put out an album is just something that seems to be normal these days. Whether it’s a good idea for Miranda I can’t really tell, I only know the theme song. One song is hardly enough to make a judgement on singing talent. Actually an album doesn’t do that either, Apple pro Tools can do a lot. You don’t actually know whether someone can sing until they sing live.

Before people start attacking me again, I did not say that she can’t sing. Columbia expects a lot from the CD because iCarly getting a larger audience on TV now. However I see one major problem with it, there seems to be a lack of a real fanbase for it. I’ve said that before and I’m saying it again, there simply is no visible fan presences for either the show or Miranda Cosgrove online. There still isn’t a real fansite for her to be found online. And that’s the main group that would be buying that album; the fans of the show. For the Miranda Cosgrove fans four songs isn’t that much either.

Last Saturday Nickelodeon had their yearly Kids’ Choice Awards. The main difference between this and other award show is that it’s about favourites, not best. So unlike a lot of award shows where they hand out awards for the best despite the winners being decided by public votes. It’s still an internet vote so still not very reliable but more reliable than others. But it’s an award show for kids so in that light it’s alright.

The show itself was a bit surprising really; Nickelodeon has one main competitor on its market, that’s the Disney Channel. Yet one of the main acts of the night was a performance of Miley Cyrus who sang Girls’ Night Out. Nickelodeon probably likes ratings and Miley would get them better ratings than any Nickeloden backed act.

It wasn’t her best live performance to date to be honest, she sounded out of breath a lot of the time. Dancing around on stage would do that so it’s forgiveable; at least she sings live unlike a lot of other young actresses. She also took home two awards while she was there, one for favourite female singer and one for favourite female TV actress, she only got one blimp for both though.

Jessica Alba got an award for favourite female movie star, which clearly shows that this is a popularity contest. I don’t think any critic would rank Jessica over Keira Knightley who was also nominated in that category.

Hannah Montana didn’t win the award for favourite TV show, that award went to Drake & Josh. So Miranda Cosgrove beat out Miley Cyrus and Emily Osment in that one, though to be fair Drake & Josh is a Nickelodeon show so it would have been a bit strange if all awards had gone to Disney (seeing the Jonas Brothers were the favourite music group so Nickelodeon had to win something). Though Drake & Josh is also a show that ended last year which makes it a bit strange, then again those cable networks repeat everything infinitely.

Last month Hollywood Reporter put out a list called Showbiz Kids Top 25, it’s a bit slow regarding news right now so lets take a look at the list. Hollywood Reporter is a serious publication so there is some merit to their opinions. Hollywood Reporter pretty much made a list of people active in Hollywood seventeen and under who they think have the biggest chance of making it big in Hollywood in the long run. The focus of this site is the female generation in Hollywood so I’m just going to highlight those in the list.

1. Miley Cyrus
2. Abigail Breslin
3. Dakota Fanning
4. Emma Watson
5. Emma Roberts
6. Cole and Dylan Sprouse
7. Freddie Highmore
8. Kristen Stewart
9. The Jonas Brothers
10. AnnaSophia Robb
11. Josh Hutcherson
12. Madison Pettis
13. Noah Gray-Cabey
14. Mark Indelicato
15. Angus T. Jones
16. Josh Flitter
17. Kyle Massey
18. Miranda Cosgrove
19. Jamie Lynn Spears
20. Spencer Breslin
21. Keke Palmer
22. Alex Etel
23. Nat and Alex Wolff
24. Selena Gomez
25. Liam Aiken

In general there aren’t any real shockers in that list though I didn’t know some of the names. I can’t know everyone in Hollywood after all, it shows that the list was made before all of the Jamie Lynn pregnancy stuff, I doubt they would have put her on the list if it had be known before that. The top five is pretty much a shoe in on the list so there’s just not a lot I can say about this list, Hollywood Reporter did their homework. Not that I doubted them in that regard, they serve as a valuable news source to this site.

News reports are saying that iCarly is a huge hit for Nickelodeon; however I find it hard to find evidence of that. Besides the official iCarly website there just isn’t any real fan site for either the show or for Miranda Cosgrove. I wouldn’t know whether it’s a bad show or not I’ve not been able to see it yet.

When looking at the ratings the numbers sure aren’t bad but they’re not what I would call a smash hit. Usually around 3.5 million people watch the show when it’s aired, as far as I can tell that’s far behind the usual numbers for the shows aired on the Disney Channel. This show was pretty much created to take on Hannah Montana even though Nickelodeon denies it; which gets more than double the number of viewers right now.

I’m also not convinced about the concept; sure it’s a cute idea to user submitted videos but the problem just is that there’s a good chance that this will be a fading thing. They apparently got 10.000 user submitted videos so far but I can’t imagine they’ll structurally get that many videos. Not to mention that it’s very likely that most of the videos are unusable.

The concept made me expect a lot of fan sites; I still haven’t found a single decent Miranda Cosgrove fan site to put on starletlinks.com. Looking at the quality what’s there right now she might have to be removed from the list due to a lack of links. Though I have to say it seems that the Disney Channel fan base is far more active on the internet than the Nickelodeon fan base. Though if the media is reporting that Miranda Cosgrove is the next big teen star you would expect a far larger web presence. She also doesn’t have an official website of her own though that’s not strange, most young celebrities lack a decent official web presence.

It’s just weird that some of the media seem to supporting Nickelodeon’s claim to success even though the success doesn’t seem to be that big. Though who knows the show will develop into a hit show after all, they’re only five shows in so far. I want to see some of the show to form my own opinion about the show though.