18-year-old YouTube star Shraddha Sharma has signed a long-term contract with Universal Music, for producing her first album, Devraj Sanyal, MD of Universal Music Group & EMI for South Asia, told MediaNama. Sanyal declined to comment on how many albums and years Sharma has signed up for, but said it's a long-term contract. "In our world, we call it a 360 degree contract which means we run everything for her, including endorsements, albums appearances, live...everything." Sharma is from Dehra Dun, and uploaded her first video in April 2011. Since then, she's got 129,873 subscribers on YouTube with 10.3 million views, 1.5 million likes on Facebook, and even been featured in an MTS advertising campaign. During an event held on the sidelines of the Nokia Music Connects event, she also repeatedly thanked Culture Machine for the work done her videos. Culture Machine is a YouTube multi-channel network that Sameer Pitalwalla co-founded after leaving Disney UTV earlier this year. According to its website, Culture Machine helps content creators create videos, enables discovery, build communities and monetize. Speaking with MediaNama, Pitalwalla told MediaNama that they're managing her entire YouTube and Social Media presence. "She's a star because of her digital presence. We grew Shraddha's viewership four times from the time she joined the Culture Machine Network. Her subscriber base grew from 40,000 to 1,30,000 on YouTube, and on Facebook from 100,000 to 1.5 million likes." On working with YouTube, Sanyal said on the panel that "Youtube will always be the devil, but a good devil. The relationship that we have with them…
