Introduction
As a teenager, my life focuses a lot around technology. This includes social media, which is a largely influential thing in everyone’s lives, especially in the music industry. Throughout this research project, I wanted to explore exactly just how much of an influence social media has on the music industry. Specifically, I am interested to find out if it has aided artists in their careers or if it was just their record label and how they have become famous or more well known due to the trends online. I intend to use mainly online sources such as articles and also wish to use documentaries or videos to assist me in finding this out. It would also be a good idea to use any statistics or interviews with artists when they talk about how their popularity increased due to social media. I aim to explore various case studies relating to different platforms to see how both artists and listeners are affected by posts online.
How Myspace helped artists in their rise to fame
Myspace was one of the first-ever social media platforms. It was founded in 2003, becoming the largest social networking site in the world between 2005 and 2008. Between those years, in 2006, it even became the most popular site in the US surpassing Google (Frymorgen, 2017)! But why was it so popular? It was due to it’s exciting and unique features such as having the ability to “select a song that would automatically play on your profile and embedding content from… YouTube” (Frymorgen, 2017). This feature was, of course, popular with new musicians such as the Sean Kingston, Panic! At The Disco and Calvin Harris (Corner, 2015) as it allowed them to showcase their music to the world for free. One of the most famous Myspace acts is Arctic Monkeys. These were a band from Sheffield, who gigged in local pubs and distributed their homemade demo CD’s at these shows. They also began to use filesharing sites and created a Myspace account (Snapes, 2015). Snapes states that ” By the time the press latched on in spring 2005, fans were already swapping bootlegs and gossip on Monkeys messageboards… they signed with indie label Domino that June” and they also performed at Reading Festival in August to what former NME editor Conor McNicholas claims to be “an instant fanbase” (Snapes, 2015). Their experience is not different from that of many other Myspace acts but they were the ones who created the model so well known today. As acts such as Lily Allen began to use Myspace to live stream and release demos (Snapes, 2015), their popularity soared and like Arctic Monkeys, they were put on the map as musicians (Irizarry,2019).
How the internet continues to aid artists with their growth
Social networking has been an aid to musicians since Myspace in 2005 but since then, it has come a long way. In a recent study by MusicWatch (Glanz, 2018), It was discovered that 90% of social media users engage with musicians online. This includes Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Snapchat is mostly used to share and view videos taken from live shows by audience members (68%), Instagram users often follow, share and tag musicians (56%) and Twitter users also follow and keep up to date with artists (51%). Finally, a mere 44% of Facebook users like the pages of various musicians (Glanz, 2018). As is made clear by these statistics, it is important to have a following on social platforms to both promote your music and to inform your fans about your career. Instagram gives the opportunity to share in many ways such as by using stories and IGTV to share videos of music and link to music platforms. This is all visual-based so appearances matter. However, Twitter is more focused on writing interesting and informative posts.
Snapchat’s introduction to the music industry
Snapchat is a social media based on sharing photos and videos for a limited time but how does that allow it to become involved in the music industry? There are a few ways in which it does so. First of all, the stories feature allows artists to share short videos about what they are up to. For example, playing a riff or touring the studio to generate excitement from their fans. Secondly, filters created by artists can be used to promote new music by playing a snippet of their song and providing a link for the user to listen to it. They can also create Bitmoji filters. These are cartoon characters who represent yourself. A famous example of this is Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ serenade in December 2017 to promote the release of his newest album (at the time) Divide (Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ Snapchat Filter: See How It Works | Billboard, 2017).
Youtube Music and it’s war with the music industry
Youtube is an extremely well-known platform and had been since its start in 2005. Everyone knows that if you want to find a video about something, it is probably on Youtube and the best part? It’s free! However, not everyone thinks that the platform is amazing. In fact, many artists are very unhappy with the streaming services. This is because every single day, it allows hundreds of millions of copyrighted music, music videos and live shows to be posted without the permission of the artists. It led to the likes of Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon and Deadmau5 among others who signed a letter to congress to have copyright laws changed (Knopper, 2016) in order to protect their music and ultimately their careers as Youtube is making money off of their material without them getting a cut so to speak.
Spotify, a new social media
Many people believe that Spotify is solely a music streaming platform but it can actually be classed as a social media. How? Austin, 2019 on Absolute. says it’s “newfound social listening features are just one show of this, allowing friends on the platform to DJ together, but with friend activity tracking, artist profiles to follow, their Concerts feature and more” give it a social networking feel. They also have a branded playlist feature where companies such as H&M and KIA can put together a playlist of songs played in their branches or stores and advertisements. This links to the promotional features of the app such as the ads on Spotify free that help to promote artists. It plays short 30 second ads talking about their new music and sometimes playing some of it too. There are also links on artist pages, which you can follow, to buy their merchandise and concert tickets. This again creates a promotional opportunity and all of the content can be shared to other social media accounts.
The ‘for you’ age, Tik Tok’s take over
Tik Tok, formerly known as music.ly, is the newest social media platform. It has a specific kind of algorithm which dictates what goes onto it’s ‘for you’ page. The videos on here are likely the ones that go viral and become trends. This gives it a key role in the music industry at present. It has the ability to make lesser-known music go viral based on trends. One example of this is ‘I Miss Having Sex But At Least I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore’ by Waterparks. After the release of their latest album FANDOM, this song was added to Tik Tok’s ‘sounds’ tab. After the label had informed the band, it became their third most streamed song on Spotify and then after one day it was at the top (Knight and Sang, 2019) despite it never being “pushed as a single” (Knight, 2020). Awsten Knight, who is the frontman of Waterparks says that his band’s old label created a Twitter Poll about ‘which Waterparks song should have a music video’. This was, of course, frustrating as their previous record label (Equal Vision) was letting Twitter users make decisions about their music (Knight and Sang, 2019). This was not very helpful to them as it denied them control over their music and career. Now, however, the band have more creative control and it is only the fans that truly make a decision on what is the single. Awsten says that he hears that “you put it on whatever and see which one pops off the most and then that’s the single.” (Knight and Sang, 2019). He feels this is “weird” but in the present day, most things are dictated by likes and shares on social media. Just like this song grew in popularity as do so many other things both music-related and otherwise.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have learned that social media not only has the ability to dictate the music we listen to but can also take control of music careers. From kickstarting the career altogether to skyrocketing the number of streams on specific songs and albums. Just like Myspace acts, releasing music online gives your music a positive impact and can shine some light on your work. This is more evident now as it is so easy to become famous online. Most people spend time on the internet and social media looking at music and musicians, especially young people who want to listen to new music. It is so easy to find recommendations of new music from lesser-known based on who you follow. Even record labels take to social media to make decisions. So I would say that social media definitely has a role in aiding aspiring musicians and popular artists in their musical careers.