Social Media: Music’s New BFF
There is never a day when we’re not perusing social media. Double-tapping pictures on Instagram, reading funny Buzzfeed articles on our Facebook newsfeed, scrolling through Twitter to see what our favorite celebs have to say… Social media has now become an integral part of the daily routine for the average 21st century human. Some people love it, some people hate it, but regardless of the way you feel, there is no denying that social media allows people to communicate with other people who otherwise would not be able to communicate with each other at all.
All across the globe, information is being exchanged at the speed of a mouse-click. As a self-proclaimed social media fanatic and expert, I cannot tell you how much I love the things that social media is allowing us to do. For me personally, the most impressive and exciting thing to watch is the effect of social media on music sharing.
Today, it is not uncommon to use social media to share or discover new music. Scrolling through my own Facebook newsfeed, music videos and new song releases being shared between friends are among the posts that I click on the most often. Kate Franklin, the Enterprise Sales Executive at Brandwatch (a social media monitoring application), mentions how, “as music fans, most of us turn to Twitter or Facebook to keep updated about our favourite bands, whilst new tracks or videos will 99% of the time get their launch on social channels. Furthermore, social media is where music audiences naturally congregate, forming their own communities and sharing their experiences of bands and artists.”[1]
Let’s talk about Myspace. Remember Myspace? I remember having a Myspace page throughout middle school. I would scour the web for special HTML backgrounds, send friend requests to people I didn’t know, and frequently change the song on my profile to keep up with the newest music. In the mid-2000s, Myspace was the number one social networking website in the world. However, since the creation of Facebook, Myspace has seen a continuing loss of membership.[2]
In 2011, Justin Timberlake and Specific Media Group “purchased the nearly defunct Myspace for $35 million, and a little over a year later, unveiled a new Myspace that almost entirely centered around music.”[3] This doesn’t come as a complete surprise to me: Myspace was one of the first social media platforms to integrate a music player into personal user profiles, and to allow bands to create their own fan pages. Bet you haven’t visited Myspace in a while. Go check it out — I dare you. Myspace now looks almost identical to the Spotify userface, and the site’s homepage is filled with articles about artists and new music.
According to comScore, Myspace now has more monthly users than both Snapchat and Vine, growing 469 percent with 40 million unique monthly visitors from 2013 to 2014.2 A Finnish study published in 2013 found that many consumers now turn to Myspace to listen to newer, unknown artists, reporting that “Myspace has become a certain de facto medium for artist presence [despite the fact that] its popularity has been decreasing. [The service] is profiled [entirely] towards music.”[4] Myspace has evolved from a simple social media platform to a massive, global, music social network.
Popular micro-blogging service Twitter has also become an outlet for talking about music. According to Brandwatch’s 2013 Twitter Landscape Report, music is the third-most talked about conversation topic on Twitter, following TV/film and sports.[1] In fact, as of March 2015, the top ten most-followed Twitter accounts are all musicians, aside from President Barack Obama, YouTube, and The Ellen Show.[5]
And let’s not forget about Facebook — the ever-present social media giant that seems to have connections with everybody (what, you’re saying you haven’t logged into your online bank account with Facebook?). In a survey I conducted recently, 100% of 54 respondents said that they used Facebook frequently. “Likeable” artist Facebook pages are now the avid fan’s number one source of information for tour dates and ticket information. The influence and integration with Facebook is apparent with all of the latest music streaming platforms, with services like Spotify automatically posting what users are listening to right onto their Facebook feeds.[6] This inevitably makes music sharing part of the whole communication landscape: when you listen to music, you’re also sharing music.
Moral of the story: social media is changing the way that people share music and ultimately making music more accessible. By making music more accessible, we’re helping to make the world a better place. Music to your ears, am I right?
References
[1] Franklin, K. (2013). Social media is revolutionising the music industry. Retrieved May 11, 2015, from https://www.brandwatch.com/2013/08/social-media-the-music-industry/.
[2] Coren, C. (2015). Myspace resurfaces as music sharing hub. Retrieved November 28, 2015, from http://www.newsmax.com/SciTech/Myspace-comeback-music-sharing/2015/04/13/id/638162/.
[3] BeDell, C. (2013). Music insiders tell us how social drives album sales and revenue. Retrieved May 8, 2015, from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-music-industry/.
[4] Salo, J., Lankinen, M., & Mäntymäki, M. (2013). The use of social media for artist marketing: Music industry perspectives and consumer motivations. JMM: The International Journal on Media Management, 15(1), 23–41. doi: 10.1080/14241277.2012.755682.
[5] Twitter accounts with the most followers worldwide as of march 2015 (in millions). (2015). Retrieved May 11, 2015, from http://www.statista.com/statistics/273172/twitter-accounts-with-the-most-followers-worldwide/.
[6] Edmondson, J. (2013). How social media and streaming have influenced the music industry. Retrieved October 7, 2015, from http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/12/02/how-social-media-and-streaming-have-influenced-the-music-industry/.
