Social Media in the Audio Industry

One of the lessons in CIU111, a subject I do at university was on the topic of ‘Social Media & your career’. The lecture discussed networking and promoting your work online through social media. I particularly found this lesson interesting as networking online will be a big part of my career, and it's something I would like to improve on over time. It’s seems pretty important in the ever changing creative industry to use the internet as a method of marketing, and as more and more people go on social media, it adds more platforms to display your portfolio on. This can then be seen by regular fans and also other industry professionals.

Something that particularly interested me was how much social media has influenced the audio industry.

As someone who is working in the audio industry, it is very important to be up to date with marketing the music I am producing. If I am trying to market a project to specific demographics through social media, I need to see what each specific demographic is using. For instance, if I am trying to market to young people, I would need to ensure that I am doing this on a platform which is mostly used by young people.

For instance, in the Sensis Social Media Report 2017, Statistics show that 89% of those surveyed between the ages of 18-29 use social media at least once a day (Sensis, 2017).Therefore, If I were trying to market a song to people in these age group, there is a good chance I can do so through social media. By expanding on this statistic, I might even be able to pinpoint exactly what majority of each age is using each media platform.

As the industry is constantly changing, If I was really trying to grow a bigger fanbase, I would need to present myself on as many social media platforms as possible. This includes potentially new forms of social media that may arise in the coming years. For instance, I am mostly, and mostly plan to have the music sharing website, Soundcloud, as my main social media.

Something that I would like to further look into is how the Audio / Music industry has changed due to the significant rise of social media in the last 10 years.

On surface level, social media has influenced the music industry in a number of ways. Band merchandise could only be purchased at a concert, however now a band can promote their merchandise through social media, giving their fans links to purchase merchandise and have it shipped to them directly. It’s also a lot less expensive and sometimes even free to market this on social media (Evans, 2015). This can also promote concerts to people in local areas, and with social media sites using data to distribute advertisements, it can advertise these to the right audiences.

From just a quick look on google I have already discovered something interesting that I hadn’t known.

Shawn Mendes is a singer-songwriter from Canada. He is most commonly known for his songs “Stitches” and “There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back”. To put it in perspective, Shawn Mendes’ career seems to have blown up very quickly. He first started posting content to a more recent social media platform, Vine, in 2013. Vine was a platform that allowed users to upload 6 second videos, and it was what everybody was on about in 2013 and 14. Shawn Mendes would post 6 second covers of songs onto his Vine account, and very quickly started growing huge numbers of followers. Only 2 years after this, Shawn Mendes was already a supporting act for pop star Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ world tour (Vulpo, 2018) . He now has his own world tours, and was even listed in Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2018 ("The 100 Most Influential People in the World", 2018) .

Just to further clarify how quickly social media has allowed to music industry to move, Vine is no longer even around; It ended as a social media platform in January 2017 having a life span of only 4 years, yet was powerful enough to launch careers such as Shawn Mendes’.

There have also been cases where partnerships were made from major record labels and social media. MySpace Music was created in 2008 in partnership with three of the world's top labels, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group as a new way to combine music labels with social media sites. (Stafford, 2010)

Not only has social media platforms created a number of successful people, it also has whole genre’s and collectives that are quickly becoming the mainstream of popular music.

Soundcloud Rap is a genre of, well, rap music that originated from music sharing platform, Soundcloud. Martin Cizmar and Walker MacMurdo of Willamette Week describe the genre as “The songs typically use simplistic, subdued beats, often with snippets of strings and sometimes complemented with emo chords, paired with lyrics that ping-pong between braggadocio and nihilism, with lots of sex and odes to heavy narcotics thrown in.” (Cizmar & MacMurdo, 2018)

Though ‘Soundcloud Rap’ is more of an umbrella term, I will use it for now for the sake of not referring to a number of various and very specific genres as the modern music scene seems to be becoming more and more ‘genreless’. Also, a lot of Soundcloud Rap has a really non-serious approach to marketing, a lot of the time I will see tracks jokingly labelled “#Country” on Soundcloud despite clearly being a hip-hop song.

Soundcloud Rap first started appearing on the radio in 2015 when, XXXTentacion’s song “Look At Me” reached the top 40 charts ("XXXTentacion's Billboard Chart History: From 'Look at Me!' & 'Sad!' to No. 1 Album '?'", 2018) .

From then on it slowly grew into the mainstream, until about the last year or so I’ve noticed a huge spike in popularity of the genre, and it seems to be all over mainstream radio. Some of the more popular artists in the game are people such as: XXXTentacion (Deceased), 6IX9INE, Post Malone, Lil Xan, Lil Uzi Vert, Juice WRLD and a personal favourite of mine, the now deceased Lil Peep.

("Lil Peep", 2018)

Missy Scheinberg of LNWY says “For the first time ever, we have a new hugely popular hip-hop movement that both stems and gains prominence from the internet.” (Scheinberg, 2017)

From here, to me at least, I would like to focus on potentially making myself much more active on social media, and would like to put more of my work out there for people to see.

References

5 Ways Social Media is Changing Music. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.socialchain.com/scribe/5-ways-social-media-is-changing-music/

Cizmar, M., & MacMurdo, W. (2018). An Aging Hip-Hop Fan and WW’s Resident Hypebeast Debate the New Sound of Rap. Retrieved from https://www.wweek.com/music/2018/01/24/an-aging-hip-hop-fan-and-wws-resident-hypebeast-debate-the-new-sound-of-rap/

Evans, Z. (2015). How Social Media and Mobile Technology Has Changed Music Forever. Retrieved from https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/08/social-mobile-changed-music/

How Social Media has affected the Music Industry. (2017). Retrieved from https://trendjackers.com/how-social-media-has-affected-the-music-industry/

Knights, O. (2018). How Social Media Has Changed The Music Industry. Retrieved from https://socialb.co.uk/blog/how-social-media-has-changed-the-music-industry/

Lil Peep. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/lilpeepmusic/photos/a.1134270259994617.1073741828.1134265469995096/1596434930444812/?type=3&theater

Scheinberg, M. (2017). Understanding SoundCloud Rap. Retrieved from https://lnwy.co/read/meet-soundcloud-rap-hip-hops-most-punk-moment-yet/

Schwartz, D. (2015). Post Malone Signs With Republic Records. Retrieved from https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/post-malone-signs-with-republic-records-news.17053.html

Sensis. (2017). Sensis Social Media Report 2017. Retrieved from https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/535ef142/files/uploaded/Sensis-Social-Media-Report-2017.pdf

Stafford, S. (2010). The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications. Music In The Digital Age: The Emergence Of Digital Music And Its Repercussions On The Music Industry, 1(2). Retrieved from http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/academics/communications/research/vol1no2/09StaffordEJFall10.pdf

The 100 Most Influential People in the World. (2018). Retrieved from http://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/

Top 100 Songs | Billboard Hot 100 Chart. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

Vulpo, M. (2018). Inside Shawn Mendes' Scandal-Free Journey From Vine Star to Pop Music Standout. Retrieved from https://www.eonline.com/au/news/938633/inside-shawn-mendes-scandal-free-journey-from-vine-star-to-pop-music-standout

XXXTentacion's Billboard Chart History: From 'Look at Me!' & 'Sad!' to No. 1 Album '?'. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8461691/xxxtentacions-billboard-chart-history-from-look-at-me-sad-to-no