BUZZMEDIA has just launched a new music video site called The Live Buzz, under the curatorship of Nic Harcourt. How famliiar you are with Harcourt depends on whether you buy your CDs from Walmart or stream music from Hype Machine.

Harcourt rose to indie-rock prominence over the last decade or so with his program “Morning Becomes Eclectic” on KCRW, the Los Angeles public radio station, by showing a knack for spotting up-and-coming talent. The New York Times dubbed him “The Star Maker of the Semipopular” in 2005. “He has impeccable taste,” the Times quoted Coldplay’s Chris Martin as saying–perhaps self-servingly, since Harcourt was the first to put Coldplay on American radio. He also was an early champion of Interpol, Nora Jones, Franz Ferdinand, and many others who thereafter went platinum.

Fast Company caught up with Harcourt to ask him a few questions about his plans for The Live Buzz, whose initial documentary-style videos have an aesthetic that steers well clear of the inanity and spectacle of MTV and Vevo, while also avoiding the dull, static feeling of the plain concert broadcast. Indeed, it looks like Harcourt and his new site might be heralding a new age of the art house Internet music video.

How did this all begin?

It was probably around December of last year. Somebody told me they [BUZZMEDIA] were looking to get in touch with me. We had a couple of conversations. As with a lot of these things, you have to have a couple of conversations and figure out if you want to play with each other before you make a commitment. We jumped into it together in the beginning of June, and it’s pretty remarkable that they’ve built this site from scratch in three months.

What is the central ingredient missing from Internet music video sites?

I think a sense of intimacy. The stuff that I’ve seen out there up until this point has been fairly–has been good stuff, don’t get me wrong–but fairly bland-looking in that it just showed the band on stage. With Live Buzz, we’re getting up close in personal in the way we’re shooting sessions. You’re feeling like you’re closer to the music, and I haven’t felt that in anything that I’ve seen before.

Who, if anyone, do you see as your competitors?

I don’t think we do. I think we’re creating something that’s new. It’s obviously gonna evolve. Day one is gonna look different from day 51, and from day 101. We’ve been working for 3 to 4 months building this out, shooting sessions with great unsigned indie bands out in Los Angeles–which we’re hoping to do in other cities as well. The reason we got into this is we identified something we felt wasn’t being served.

Will your focus be on spotting new artists?

It’s gonna be a mix. I have a history, a reputation or whatever, for launching new artists, and the funny thing is that whenever you read a bio of me, it usually mentions Coldplay or Norah Jones or these artists I was fortunate to, I guess, hear before a lot of other people did. But there are plenty of other artists I’ve championed over the years who haven’t become platinum-selling artists. At the end of the day, I’m a fan. I come at this with the perspective of a fan, and I have this personal thirst for discovery. You can’t be too hip and groovy, you know–you have to have the glue that holds it together. We don’t want to be a marginal site. By having sessions with people like Interpol, which we’re hopefully gonna be doing next month, that will help bring an audience to the site to discover the other bands and artists we’re supporting as well.

To do that, Fuller’s 19 Entertainment paired with entertainment website operator Buzzmedia to produce a campaign in the form of a six-webisode series that revolves around the contestants and Ford Motor Co.

As a promo tool for its own sites, the effort prominently features Jared, the name behind popular celebrity site JustJared.com, as the campaign’s host, with the blogger appearing in several installments that launch today and roll out over the next two months.

Buzzmedia had to juggle the goals of two companies as it hyped the goings-on of the “Dream” house: 19 Entertainment wants to drive traffic to its show and build a following with that viewership, while Ford, which has been a major sponsor of “Idol” over the years, wants to up the exposure of its new small Fiesta among younger consumers.

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The addition of these properties makes BuzzMedia the single largest independent publisher of music content on the web, according to comScore Media Metrix. Buzzmedia is already a fast-growing entertainment publisher and is behind such properties as Go Fug Yourself.

Services of the websites acquired range from providing fully legal mp3 downloads to live music coverage and introducing emergent artists.

But Tyler Goldman thinks the real moneymaking opportunity is in the deep dive, publishing endlessly about topics that lots of people care about. (Pop stars and music, anyone?)

So far, the idea has worked out. After Mr. Goldman’s social network, Buzznet.com, went live in 2006, it spawned a company, Buzzmedia, that now owns three dozen music and celebrity sites, including Celebuzz.com (a celebrity gossip blog) and Stereogum.com (alternative music news).

It’s akin to the financial world, said Mr. Goldman, Buzzmedia’s chief executive: “If you care about natural gas in Kazakhstan, you’re getting 60 articles about it. People have the same passion for Britney Spears.”

Now, the network is adding six sites to its arsenal, either as a partner or as a full owner, including PopMatters.com and Gorilla vs. Bear (gorillavsbear.blogspot.com), a site dedicated to independent music. The other additions are ConcreteLoop.com, PureVolume.com, RCRDLBL.com, and the Hype Machine (hypem.com).

This kind of “blockbuster strategy” — focusing on hits rather than the breadth of products — has a future in the digital age, according to a 2008 report by Anita Elberse, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School. In the markets she looked at for her study, music and videos, the most popular products, captured even more of the market than they previously did.

The company, which is based in Los Angeles and has a handful of other offices, employs 115 people full time. Of those, 60 help produce editorial content, much of it curated from material floating online. Hundreds of “super” users also provide content.

For people interested in a topic like alternative music, Mr. Goldman said, an online search can be inefficient, sometimes requiring several clicks. What his sites can provide, he says, is a one-stop experience — and that entices people to come back daily, making the sites themselves less reliant on the occasional vagaries of search engines.

So far, Mr. Goldman’s instincts have paid off. In April, Buzzmedia’s sites had 16.5 million unique users, according to comScore. The new additions, he said, could add a couple of million more.

On the site now, users will be able create a custom content feed when they follow other users or follow communities around topics that appear on other contributors’ blogs. The ability to follow a user means tapping into their own content and sharing channel on Buzznet. Users will then see updates in a news feeds from the people they follow on their homepage and in the footer that follows them around the site. Users with the most followers will be trending under “most followed” on the Buzznet homepage.

Buzznet has also included a trending topics section to their homepage that features the most popular features and topics on the network. The new reblog feature allows users to create a channel that reflects their personality and taste without having to post any original content.

Users can also now add multimedia to comments and the site includes Facebook Connect. To oversee this new version of the site, Buzznet has named magazine exec Aviva Yael as editor.

Clearly, Buzznet is remodeling its site with inspiration from Facebook and Twitter. According to Compete, Buzznet got around 2.3 million unique visitors in March, which isn’t too shabby for a niche social network. It still remains a question, however, if Buzznet will be able to replicate the engagement on Twitter or see any more substantial growth as Facebook takes over the world with its 400 million plus userbase.

Last month’s launch of the new feminine protection brand comprised several products designed for 14- to-24-year-olds and packaged to look more like cosmetic products than tampons.

The launch featured ads that made fun of the tampon-ad cliché of the menstrual period being a time to put on white gossamer gowns and dance on the beach. The company has begun a new phase of the campaign, a social-media push centering on it-girls the Kardashian sisters, stars of E!’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

The effort, developed with Web publisher Buzzmedia, includes a video series featuring Kris (the mother) and sisters Kim and Khloe. The five-video series is intended to express the idea that menstruation isn’t something that one should be ashamed of or avoid talking about. The videos are running on the Kardashian’s official Web sites and other Buzzmedia sites, including Celebuzz.com, Just Jared, and Whitney Port’s official Web site.

Doug Rohrer, chief revenue officer for Buzzmedia, tells Marketing Daily that Kotex is involved in several Web sites that together garner some 10 million unique visits from 12- to 24-year-old females.

“The indices are through the roof against this demo, and we as a company are tied very closely with a young female demo across all of our sites.” He says the Kardashians have a large following among young women, that Kim Kardashian’s site is the most popular celebrity site on the Web, and that she has a million or so followers on Twitter. “The Kardashians are strong in about every area in which you can measure digital,” he says.

One video has Mrs. Kardashian and the sisters introducing a series of videos of real people talking about what it was like to get their first period. Khloe Kardashian showed up for the launch event via Marina Maher Communications at New York’s Madison Square Park, where she broke through a faux brick wall meant to evince the campaign tag-line “Break the Cycle.”

Aida Flick, Kotex brand director, tells us that the effort was intended to get away from euphemisms about menstruation and speak honestly. “Girls today are watching reality TV — learning about things online. You can’t say ‘down there’ on TV, but you can see reality TV that shows just about everything….we have lost our connection to [girls and young women], so we wanted to poke fun at feminine care ads and start an open, honest conversation.”

The new Web site UbyKotex.com has a “Get Real” theme with features such as a section called “The Straight Scoop” where girls can post questions, which are then answered by a nurse, a peer and a mom. Flick says the site, which has been up for “a couple of weeks,” has gotten 700,000 views, 500,000 visitors interacting with the site, and 300,000 sample requests.

The effort includes a “Declaration of Real Talk” wherein Kotex has pledged a $1 donation to Girls For A Change for every woman who signs the Declaration online.

When a reality show about the Kardashian sisters of Calabasas debuted in fall 2007, most people had never heard of the family and what was known could scarcely be considered positive.

Their late father, a lawyer, helped O.J. Simpson win acquittal at his murder trial; middle daughter Kim palled around nightclubs with Paris Hilton; and a graphic sex tape featuring the brunet and a former boyfriend ended up in the hands of a porn distributor.

Two and a half years later, the Kardashians are an inescapable cultural and commercial force. Their series, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” which concludes its fourth season Sunday on E, has shattered viewership records for the cable network and spawned a spin-off show. Kim Kardashian.com is the world’s most popular official celebrity website, according to its operator. Checkout-aisle magazines and gossip blogs cover the smallest details of the sisters’ lives. And Madison Avenue calls on the family to sell mainstream America everything, from diet pills and orange juice to NASCAR and fast food.

Their popularity comes despite the fact that the sisters lack the talents that traditionally lead to superstardom and, some believe, partly because of it.

“There’s an aspirational quality to somebody who has become a celebrity for — and I don’t say this in an offensive way — but for not doing anything celebrity-worthy,” said Matt Delzell, an executive at Davie Brown Entertainment, a company that helps corporations choose celebrity endorsers. The young women to whom the Kardashians appeal, he said, “tend to think that’s pretty cool. That’s something I might be able to achieve.”

Television programming, especially on cable, is increasingly dependent on created rather than established celebrities. Turning nobodies — or virtual nobodies — into reality stars is cheaper than hiring actual somebodies. But the Kardashians have transcended that level. While personalities on Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchises and MTV’s “Jersey Shore” and “The Hills” seem to exist to promote those shows, the Kardashians have turned their program into a promotional vehicle to expand their own empire.

Kris Jenner, the family matriarch and self-described “momager,” said she had little time for those who criticized her brood for being “famous for nothing.” She is too busy sorting through business opportunities, working on “SPINdustry” — a Kardashian documentary special debuting Sunday on E — and generally protecting what she only slightly self-consciously refers to as “our brand.”

“At a certain point, you have to put on your business hat and think of yourself that way,” she said recently.

“Keeping Up With the Kardashians” was conceived as a Hollywood version of “The Brady Bunch” — the harmless high jinks of a loving blended family against a backdrop of wealth and famous connections.

After divorcing Robert Kardashian, with whom she had four children — Kourtney, 30; Kim, 29; Khloe, 25; and Rob, 22 — Kris married former Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner, who had four children of his own. The couple had two more daughters, Kendall, 14, and Kylie, 12. From the beginning, Kim occupied the Marcia role — sexy and popular — but there were story lines for everyone.

Her sisters snagged their own show, “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami,” last year and made headlines when Kourtney became pregnant by an on-again-off-again boyfriend and Khloe married Lakers’ sixth man Lamar Odom less than a month after they met. When the NBA champions and their families visited the White House last month, Khloe was photographed chatting with President Obama. Kim, meanwhile, agonized over whether to get back together with New Orleans Saints star Reggie Bush. (She did and showed up on the sidelines at the most-watched Super Bowl in history.)

Cameras recorded every tear and shriek and the audience spiked. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” has averaged 3.7 million viewers this year, double last season’s total, and was especially successful in the young, female and free-spending demographic coveted by advertisers. According to Nielsen, Kardashian viewers tend to be single, college-educated women with no children, white-collar jobs and annual salaries of more than $60,000.

The show is the highest-rated series on cable among women ages 18 to 34, and occasionally beats even the network shows in its time slot for those viewers.

Why the Kardashians have succeeded where other programs purporting to show the real lives of beautiful people have not is the subject of much analysis in an industry eager to replicate them. Many credit the relationship between the sisters and their mother.

In spite of the sex tape, the quickie marriage and the out-of-wedlock child, the family still somehow manages to seem a model of sorts, said veteran celebrity journalist Bonnie Fuller. The sisters have their own homes, love interests and career prospects, but seem to enjoy nothing more than a good, long family talk at their mother’s kitchen table.

“It’s a modern-type of wholesome. We’re living in a very different world now. Sarah Palin’s daughter has a child out of wedlock,” said Fuller, the editor in chief of Hollywood Life, a celebrity and entertainment website. “Despite everything that has gone on with them, they come across as a very tight-knit family, and that appeals to women.”

Any conversation about the Kardashians’ popularity eventually touches on the sexual allure of Kim. The tape she made with rapper Ray J — she initially sued to stop it but later reached a settlement with distributor Vivid — is “definitely a best-seller,” a company spokeswoman said while declining to provide sales numbers. There was also a Playboy pictorial and her annual pin-up calendar. But she has managed to pull what marketers say is an unusual feat — appealing to men without pushing away women.

“She’s attractive to guys because she’s absolutely beautiful,” said Brad Haley, the executive vice president of marketing for CKE Restaurants, whose Carl’s Jr. burger chain hired Kim to promote its new chicken salad. But she also draws in women, he said, because “she’s not a waif-thin model. She’s got curves . . . and talks about how she’s got to diet and keep after her body.”

“[Our fan base] started off very male, but it’s transformed into a very heavily female base,” Kim Kardashian said Tuesday backstage at the New York runway debut of a new Kardashian fashion line from Bebe. “I think that’s because we’re not afraid to share our beauty secrets and our flaws. If I have cellulite, I’m not afraid to talk about it and try to find a product to make it look better.”

Beyond “Keeping Up” — which Kris Jenner calls “the mothership” — and its spinoff, the Kardashians stoke their tech savvy fans with an intense online presence. Kim’s website, where she blogs and posts answers to fan questions, gets more than 6.7 million page views a month, according to Quantcast. Khloe’s gets 3 million and Kourtney’s 2 million, according to site operators.

“They have embraced social media in a way that is profoundly different than other celebrities,” said Karina Kogan, chief marketing officer for Buzzmedia, a company that operates celebrity sites, including the Kardashians’. While Britney Spears, another Buzzmedia partner, relies on “a team of folks” to write the material on her site, the Kardashians most often handle it themselves, she said. The sisters routinely make news on Twitter or their blogs. When Kim wanted to refute reports that she had breast implants, she posted a photo of herself in a bikini at age 14.

How long the Kardashian franchise will endure is a subject that sparks debate. Kim’s appearance on “Dancing With the Stars,” which could have established her legitimacy as an entertainer with a broader national audience, fizzled when she was sent packing after two episodes.

“It remains to be seen how [the Kardashians] will do in the future. I don’t think the TV show has an incredibly long shelf life,” said Delzell, the branding executive.

But Kris Jenner is convinced otherwise. Asked to look 10 years in the future, she doesn’t hesitate.

“It’s ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ season 24. Kylie gets married,” she said.

Headed by Craig Bland, who has been promoted to vp celebrity programming and development, the unit is charged with expanding celebrity-driven branded programming.

“Our initial forays indicate that we have only begun to scratch the surface of this opportunity,” said chief revenue officer Doug Rohrer.

Buzzmedia manages websites on behalf of musicians and other celebrities, including Britney Spears, the Kardashian sisters, as well as Nicole Richie, among others. It also runs websites such as the Superficial, Celebuzz and Buzznet.

Buzzmedia’s first forays into celebrity-driven programming campaigns have included deals with J.C. Penney, featuring “The City” star Whitney Port, and Ikea US, featuring the Kardashians.