Behind: Social Media VS The Music Industry
Written by Orlaith Redmond
In this extract, you are going to read about the benefits of social media in the eyes of a musician, but also the downsides to them and their career.
Social media is a necessity for musicians in today's society as it is the most effective way to properly promote and advertise your music. Without it, you would have a very small and limited audience. People listen to, and find music off of social media so if an artist doesn’t put their music on a platform such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or Spotify, they are going to lose out on listeners.
TikTok and Instagram are very important platforms in the eyes of new artists. According to Exploding Topics, 44.5 % of internet users who are between the ages of 16-24 use TikTok. That’s almost half of the internet users in that age range. To reach the younger audiences, artists and musicians have to put their music up on these platforms. The algorithms on TikTok and Instagram push short 15 - 30 second snippets of songs which artists and musicians have come to understand. This has led musicians and artists to create boring, repetitive songs with only one area where effort is put in, which they put on to these platforms. This can lead to engagement with the song, but it leaves the listener disappointed. The coined term for this is “TikTok music”.
There is no doubt that social media is incredibly useful for artists large and small to promote their music as they have the ability to reach an incredibly large number of people that might listen to what they are putting out. However, no matter how useful or important it is, it is undeniable that social media in music is responsible for the reason that artists need to fit into society's ideology of being attractive, and be absolutely “perfect”. In the late 20th century, before social media was a thing, artists were judged based on their talent alone, not if they could juggle talent and appearance. For example, Billy Joel's first album was a commercial flop due to a production error but two years later, he had his breakthrough when he released ‘Piano Man’. It is not to say that Billy Joel is imperfect in any way, but he obtained his fame based off of his musical talent alone. Nowadays, musicians, and celebrities in general, are incredibly criticised for their appearance and style on social media, especially women, regardless of if it has any sort of relevance to their livelihood
Social media is also a place where negativity can spread like wildfire. Many musicians and celebrities have been criticized for their appearance, the way they age, their weight, and how they fit into the beauty standards. Lizzo has faced a lot of criticism over the course of her career. Online trollers often have shamed her for her weight, while the music industry pressured her to lose weight, even though her body had nothing to do with the sound of her music. In 2023 she began her weight loss journey and still, she faced criticism and backlash from people on social media. This goes to show you just cannot win with people on social media, and that social media is a place in which people can talk negatively about someone, ruining that person's perception of themselves, and face no consequence. Lewis Capaldi is another example of a musician being judged and criticized for their appearance. People on social media have said for years that Capaldi is ‘not conventionally attractive’ and that he ‘doesn't fit into society's beauty standards’. However, both of these artists have shown time and again that they are more than their looks, and they can make good music.
Social media is a fantastic place for artists to become independent in their marketing. Social media gives artists the opportunity to step away from the reliance on major record labels and radio stations to promote their music, and allow them to reach a much wider audience with people of varying ages. However, this can lead to the artist spending too much time perfecting social media videos than actually spending time perfecting and working on their music, which is quite counter-productive. This oftentimes leads to burn-outs. Artists Post Malone and Halsey have expressed frustration with their labels for telling them to make posts on social media. In 2022, Halsey criticised her label for not allowing her to release her music until she had a viral social media post. She said that she just wants to release music and shouldn’t feel like her music is being held hostage.
Social media is also responsible for artists being judged on a ‘cool’ factor instead of their actual musical talent. This links in to the push for artists to be attractive because if the people on social media don’t think you’re cool or good-looking, the music won’t sell.
As I have previously mentioned, the push of social media has forced musicians to rely on streaming platforms so they don’t lose out on listeners. However these streaming platforms, for example, Spotify, pay little to nothing per stream. This has led artists to rely on merch sales and concert ticket sales to make their living. This can be extremely challenging for a small artist to bypass as they do not have enough listeners to sell merch or go on a tour, which means that they will still have to have a job. In short, smaller artists cannot put their all into their music as they still have to have another job to make enough money to live. This means that social media can only support artists with a following large enough to make a sufficient amount of royalties to support them.
To conclude, social media has many positives and negatives, and it has the ability to help artists and make them prosper, but the majority of the time, it drags them down.