Social Media and Music

Tonight, I’m going to be busy producing my second podcast of 2020 on Social Media and Music. It’s a topic I’m much captivated by. Since the early years, way back when Lindsey Sterling gained a following and Justin Bieber was discovered doing Usher covers, social media has been a major way that new talent is discovered and uncovered.

That’s still happening today. Breakout talents like Billie Eilish, for example, can be discovered on SoundCloud one day, and clean up at the GRAMMYs the next.

But how effective is social media in building a brand for yourself? Are there other ways to do it? Or does social media have a monopoly on who gets in and who doesn’t – have they become the new, digital gatekeepers?

Joining me for this podcast will be my friend and professional musician, Joseph Christianson. Christianson has several years of playing professionally under his belt already, is a member of the award winning San Francisco Quartet, and travels the world playing his violin. Some of the questions we are going to get into in this podcast are:

Overall, has social media helped musicians or harmed them? 

With video streaming platforms like YouTube, it seems like anyone can get famous. Heck, the number one YouTuber right now is a kid who reviews toys. And then there’s that Pewdiepie guy. Who said the best thing to come out of Sweden was lingonberries, right?

But is it as easy as it looks?

Here are a few sobering facts.

Every minute of the day, around 38,052 hours of music are listened to on Spotify alone. If that doesn’t terrify you, in 2018 alone, Americans streamed over 900 billion songs. SoundCloud has over 10 million music creators and 177 million tracks. I know for a fact there are not enough top one hundred charts in the world to fill that many songs. So where are all of these music hopefuls going? Are they all fading into the great white noise that the internet as become?

Challenges of building a brand on social media – too much competition? Too much noise? What are musicians doing to break through the noise?

As mentioned above, more content is being created than ever before. With so much content now available, it can be difficult for musicians to stand out in the crowd. One thing that experts recommend musicians can do to help differentiate themselves is to grow their social media presence. But that’s easier said than done.

Today, everyone is trying to grow their brand on social media. With 3.5 billion social media users worldwide, trying to build a brand can sometimes feel like opening a lemonade stand and hoping someone will just sort of stumble by. Ever changing algorithms don’t help. Nobody really seems to understand what works in terms of growing an audience – we all just sort of repeat the same old advice “post everyday.” But that sort of sounds like saying “if you build it, they will come.” Which might be great advice if you’re in a baseball movie, but not so great when you’re eating ramen because your last music gig just covered rent.

Is social media for musicians all hype? Are there other ways to make it as a musician?

Social media was new at one point. We all remember that. But now, it’s what everyone is doing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still incredible effective. But is it right for everybody? Is there another way to have a successful career apart from social media?

According to an article by the Rolling Stone, a few ways musicians are making money today include selling merchandising, asking for direct funding via platforms like Patreon, taking part in advertising campaigns, performing live, and, of course, recording music and getting that music played.

The internet, social media and digital streaming sites may have created more revenue streams than ever before, modern musicians are still strapped for cash. Are there some innovative, novel ideas out there that people are taking advantage of in order to stay relevant and put food on the table?

What is the place of classical music today?

Lastly, I want to emphasis that the only kind of music is not pop music, hip-hop or rock. There are still a lot of people out there playing and/or enjoying classical music. And why not? Classical music is considered by many to be the epitome of what music can achieve. It has many health benefits, too, ranging from helping you study better, to lowering your stress level after an annoying day in the office, to even making you smarter.

Perhaps, in a world inundated with billions of song streams per year, and young Americans constantly flipping from one song to the next in hopes of finding some sort of spiritual fulfillment that eludes them, classical music is exactly the remedy needed.

Classical music does, after all, aim to transcend the mundane, the every day, and draw us into a world that does not only distract us from what we are thinking or feeling in the moment, but demands that we ignore ourselves entirely in order to understand the narrative that is taking place right before us.

I look forward to diving into all of these topics tonight on my podcast which I will make available to you shortly.

UPDATE

The episode is now live. Tune in!