How Twitter and other forms of Social Media affect Artists
Correlating Twitter Followers and Record Sales
Currently, seven out of the ten most followed accounts on Twitter are those of music artists or music related accounts. Katy Perry tops the list with over 75 million followers, followed by Justin Bieber at over 67 million, and Taylor Swift coming in at number four (after President Barack Obama) with over 64 million followers. These artists are undoubtably some of the biggest stars within the music industry. But is there a correlation between their record sales and the amount of loyal social media followers they possess?
According to Twitter`s head of music industry relations, Tatiana Simonian, at least one of the top five yearly “trends” on Twitter are typically music related. Social media has become one of the most efficient promotional sources in today`s society. Social media allows music to easily be shared, enjoyed, and marketed with just the click of a button. Music data and analytics company, The Next Big Sound, conducted a study and discovered that those artists with a significantly higher number of Twitter followers have increased their record sales by about ten percent.
I decided to conduct my own research in regards to the relation between the number of Twitter followers held by Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift and the individual record sales of each artist. I evaluated each of these artists` Twitter accounts, as well as their financial ranking on Forbes.
Katy Perry currently has 75.8 million followers on Twitter, and took in about $135 million in record sales in 2015 alone.
Justin Bieber currently has 67.8 million followers on Twitter, and took in about $80 million in record sales in 2015.
Taylor Swift currently has 64.1 million followers on Twitter, and just like Bieber, took in about $80 million in record sales in 2015.
With these statistics, I calculated an estimated “record sales to follower” ratio for each individual.
Katy Perry bearing about $1.78 million in record sales for every one million Twitter followers.
Justin Bieber bearing about $1.18 million in record sales for every one million Twitter followers.
Taylor Swift bearing about $1.25 million in record sales for every one million Twitter followers.
Now clearly, number of Twitter followers are not the sole reason for the amount of record sales achieved by the artist and vice versa. Many other factors have to be taken into consideration such as popularity of their music genre, the range of their audience, the number of “hits” or albums produced by each artist, etc. However, there does seem to be a clear correlation between the record sales of the artists and their number of Twitter followers. Both the record sales and followers of Katy Perry undeniably exceed those of both Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. And with only a slight difference in Twitter followers, Bieber and Swift are taking in nearly identical record sale earnings. As mentioned, there are many other factors to be considered regarding the statistical differences in the artists. Nevertheless, I believe a higher Twitter follower count is representative of the loyal fans of the artist. These fans are the ones buying their music, and ultimately defining the success of the artist with each sale.
The use of social media has become a form of “merchandising,” allowing artists to easily promote themselves and their music to their fan-base of followers. The fan-base, overall popularity and success of the artists can also be expanded with every “retweet” or “share” acquired. Number of Twitter followers and record sales are not a matter of causation, but correlation. There are endless factors contributing the the success of an artist in the music industry, however, it can not be denied that an increased follower count and fan-base certainly works to the advantage of the artist.
A More In-Depth Analysis of Twitter’s Impact
Twitter is a very unique platform for music artists. An article by a graduate student at University of Texas, Jessica Perriliat, evaluates this claim more in-depth. It is a place where they can hear from their fans and immediately contact them. Artists can also use twitter to promote their music and anything else related to their music careers such as tours, release dates etc. It gives them the option to also have self-expression and talk about other issues which gives their fans the ability to have a closer look into their personalities and opinions of things past their music. Perrillait mentions a very similar same statement.
“For music artists, it has begun to evolve into a self-promoting social networking site where they can provide their fans with a closer look into who they are, build relationships, promote their music, and gain more listeners.” There are many ways to promote an artist’s music which is often the main goal. And as it would be required for artists and record labels to pay for music advertisements and commercials, it is very possible for an artist to do so without having to pay for it by using twitter and promoting their music to thousands if not millions of their followers. But even with all of that being the case, twitter is a platform in which artists can really build relationships with fans. Although good music can definitely gain more listeners and expand their fan bases, what may really be the key to expand a fan base is being able to reach someone on a personal level and being a likeable person, which can be seen on a platform like twitter.
…it’s the number one key in music right now…having that relationship with fans where it’s not based on your record label, it’s based on you. When you are tweeting, it’s not about what label you’re on, it’s about you’re dealing with your fans directly.
Perrillait finds that those who have twitter accounts buy “77% more digital downloads than non-users”. Those with twitter accounts overall seem more interested and invested into digital music and music videos. This may not be a conscious decision however. Personally as someone who has a twitter account and checks twitter frequently, there really is no escaping what is new and popular in the music industry. This is not only relating to the actual music but also things in artists lives that seem interesting or at least entertaining, such as “twitter beef” between artists. All of these things often lead to having a curiosity on the artist’s music, as that is also a factor of how fans or listeners may judge an artist.
Perilliat’s study seems to go in depth and analyze twitter’s relation to the music industry. In her survey she had 29 statements for each person involved in her survey to rate from “1) never, 2) rarely, 3) sometimes, 4) often, or 5) all the time”. There was a wide range of those who took the survey, from age 15 to age 56 and of different races. “Although the survey did reach different demographics, as a result of the snowball effect, the majority of participants were female, African American, and between the ages of 15–24.” Her study is not very reliable because she surveyed those who use twitter for music purposes and those who do not use twitter. This is an issue because most if not all of the statements she created were about twitter and music. Her results ended up showing that those who used twitter for music purposes agreed with most of the statements while non users did not, which is to be expected. But the rest of her article was very useful while the study she conducted herself was the only faulty section.
How Does All This Publicity Impact Popularity?
It’s a well-known saying that all publicity is good publicity. With the use of social media, that may very well still be true. It’s almost an empirical question, in order to truly determine if publicity relating to music can truly be bad publicity. Academia from Kansas and Ohio State evaluated the effect of publicity on consumers and said,
Publicity is considered a relatively credible source of information and therefore is more influential than other marketer-driven communications
For users like Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and others who already have a lot of exposure, the negative publicity may give the “haters” a foot-hold, but for the users who are using this publicity to gain traction, the sheer amount of mentions will be positive for these groups. The smaller groups may be able to “pay” to advertise, but none of their efforts will be as effective as being talked about over some sort of medium.
Unrelated to music, Stanford Graduate School of Business conducted a study of negative publicity in sales when a product or company is relatively known. The project evaluated the role of positive and negative publicity in two realms; the first being one where the authors of books were well established, and the second being the authors were unknown. The negative publicity with well-known authors tended to decrease sales by 15%. The instances in which authors were known, sales increased by 45% even with negative publicity! Another reason for the increase in sales is that the negative opinions will fade, but it’s less likely that knowledge of a book’s existence will fade.
Another very interesting statistic is from a website called Social Bakers. In recent statistics that they grabbed, they determined that on a 10-point scale (10 being the most likely), Justin Bieber ranked a 2 on how likely people would recommend his brand to their friends, but he has the 2nd most followers on Twitter with 67.8 million and counting. In this instance, Bieber receives a negative reputation and more than likely some bad publicity, but it seems that this generates interest for his cause. In this instance, we can see how an artist is not only forced to sell their music, but their personality as well. Comparing this to the Stanford study with books, the negative reputation seems to be good for music artists. When stirring up some controversy or creating an unorthodox image for oneself, this tends to generate more of a following.
The reason for this unorthodox success seems to be a more simple explanation than many can understand. Consumers are buying into an artist’s personality, character, and lifestyle. More times than not, a consumer doesn’t want an artist that is going to blend into the music industry and just ride the typical wave of fame for a short while. Consumers tend to appreciate, or at least what we see from the data, the determined nature of an artist to be different. Whether the artist is making a statement through their music or through a more than questionable lifestyle, it seems to be universally effective depending on the target audience.
It remains interesting to see how publicity and popularity interact with one another in regards to music industry and the general public. Because the music industry is a person with a brand connecting to people, it seems to have a convoluted way of working compared to organizations connecting with consumers. Organizations and consumers tend to follow a somewhat predictable inverse relationship of negative publicity to popularity. On the other hand, celebrities almost have a positive correlation of popularity compared to any kind of publicity.
Shazam
The growth of Twitter as a mechanism for artists to promote themselves has risen over the years. In the beginning of its origins, most artists were still using MySpace as their platform (which is still being used today). Although self-promotion has always worked, the artists are finding out that Twitter fans and notoriety are starting to become a byproduct of one app in general, Shazam. In a study in late 2014, the “Shazam Effect” was being analyzed as one of the growths for artists in the industry today. It’s not just Twitter, Instagram or YouTube that are helping the up and coming artists grow, but the amount of listens that are getting you there.
Stanford Ph.D., Avery Wang, co-founded the tech start up called “Shazam” in 2000, with the idea to develop a service that could identify any song within a few seconds, by only using sound frequencies. After years of progress socially and technologically, their main breakthrough came about from one young artist from New Zealand by the name of Lorde.
Wang’s research looking back at her rise to the top is quite impressive. It was said that in 2013, when she first released her EP “The Love Club”, the soon-to-be best selling single of the year, “Royals” was first spread on Shazam. “In nearly 3 months of the release of that EP, Royals had over 500,000 search matches on Shazam, in New Zealand alone” says Wang. Of all the places in the states that paid attention to Lorde, Tennessee was the first to have a mass search of Lorde in October of 2013, and by the start of 2014, Lorde was a household name.
In August of 2014, Shazam passed the 100-million active-user milestone, and much of this was due to the growth of access to this app within that year. Shazam, being such a rare group of Internet companies started something very new for users and since then, more artists than just Lorde are reaping the benefits of their service such as Iggy Azalea, Sam Smith, and Meghan Trainor (all of which debuted in 2014 in the Shazam chart and recorded over 1 million search matches respectively). In no way was Shazam the leading cause of their rise, but Shazam was able to track and follow them more efficiently and it’s safe to say that because of Shazam so many people began to follow their respective social media pages, such as Twitter or Instagram.
The word of mouth in today’s day and age comes from really two places, Social Media or through Shazam. Shazam has grown so much so that they just launched a new imprint under Warner Music Group for artists to get discovered through the app. The direction that music has gone to is in the data. “Radio exposure, unsurprisingly, is the most important thing when it comes to introducing new songs to listeners” Wang says, “Shazam tells you that people wanted to know more.”
Even now so, Radio stations and DJs alike are just picking songs because of the amount of spins and recognition they have on the Shazam charts section in the app itself, especially iHeartRadio, hosted by Ryan Seacrest. He states that each week, he and his team collaborate to analyze the data on the Shazam page. His example came from the song “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor. “We watched weekly from the beginning of October [about a month after the release of the single] to about halfway through October. We saw a rise from 12.8 rating to 38.2 rating all the way up to 68.97 rating and [we knew] it was time to premier it on our station.” Seacrest says.
