Upon completing my draft, my tutor gave me some feedback about how it could be improved. The first improvement is in the paragraph about social media’s impact on artist growth. It was suggested that I find a second source so that my findings are supported and not biased. This is important because I do not want to sound badly informed or incorrect in any way.
My improvements:
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). Similarly to these statistics are the percentage in which artists are recognised online based on their popularity. Next Big Sound found that in 2013 a whopping 90.7% of artists online are undiscovered yet mainstream artists (1.1%) make up 87.3 percent of Facebook page likes, however, they also found that 80% only receive up to 1 Facebook like daily, which just shows how much the platform’s popularity is decreasing (Ulloa,2014). They also found that different artist’s streams and following are going up in the billions every year (Benatar,2014). 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 and Facebook’s popularity is continually decreasing.
Secondly, he suggested that there was more to Youtube and Youtube music than I was looking into and should think about that more. This could possibly mean that I can remove the paragraph about Spotify as this is not very helpful or well-informed. In my opinion, it does not add much to the essay as it is mainly based on my own knowledge.
My improvements:
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! This makes it the perfect platform for people who are just starting out as musicians and want to share their work with the world. The best part about this is that not only is it free to upload but on average 30 million people use Youtube per day (37 Mind Blowing YouTube Facts, Figures and Statistics – 2020 – MerchDope, 2020). That is an amazing amount of reach and can even lead to people becoming recognised. In fact, 5 seconds of summer is a very famous example of this. Their acoustic video cover of Chris Brown and Justin Bieber’s “Next 2 You,” has earned 1.1 million YouTube views since being posted in July 2011 and from there, their career took off (5 Seconds of Summer: 10 Things You Need To Know, 2014). 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.
Finally, he explained to me that my conclusion needs to summarise my key points and talk about answers to any questions that I gained throughout the research project.
My improvements:
Social media is relative to popularity. No matter the time, it will always be about followers and likes that make you and your music popular. So how much of an influence does social media really on the music industry and does it largely affect the careers of musicians? From the beginning, social media has indeed helped many to improve their popularity by using it to showcase your work and tease at new releases it is the perfect method of promotion. What about record labels? Well, they also make use of it but often to the dismay of artists. So, in conclusion, yes social media is extremely vital in the music industry.