The musician as promoter in social media

For audiences, social media provides different ways of discovering new artists. For musicians, they become cheap and accessible channels of promotion. Online video platforms like Youtube allow musicians to post music or performance videos and create an image to share with their fans. In 2006 MySpace was the main website where musicians were sharing music; there, artists like Owl City or Arctic Monkeys built online communities and went on to be discovered and signed by major labels. Some of the popular music sharing websites today are Soundcloud, ReverbNation, or Bandcamp (the latter of which allows artists to sell their music on a pay-what-you-wish basis); they all provide sharing buttons, allowing sharing through social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr; these websites provide a basis for grass-root marketing, as they facilitate the music and videos to be shared and spread via the online ‘word-of-mouth’.

Social media not only allows the sharing of one’s music, but the construction of an online brand and persona and the illusion of ‘fake intimacy’ built through online interactions with the fans. According to Baym (2012, p. 288), social media, such as Twitter, create a new expectation of intimacy. For musicians, since music is so easily shared online, this expectation to maintain ongoing connections and affiliations with their fans is even stronger. Marwick and Boyd (2011, p. 140) describe micro-celebrity as ‘a mindset and set of practices in which audience is viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan management; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others.’ 

The fan/artist relationship is essentially a customer/retailer relationship. As many musicians nowadays sell their music online, they need to build a relationship of trust with their customers. McCourt (quoted in Styven, 2007, p.60) points out that online services try to compensate for their lack of materiality by offering features such as personalisation and community functions. According to Koernig (quoted in Styven, 2007, p. 61) strategies for making the intangible more tangible often include the use of pictures, physical symbols, or facts and information. For an indie musician this translates into working towards building a personal brand and using social media to create an online presence; building a community around this online persona through the mindset of a ‘micro celebrity’ is an essential part in the process of self-promotion. 

Although social media is a valuable tool for reaching audiences and for receiving immediate feedback, maintaining an online persona and an ongoing interaction with the fans can prove very time-consuming and even difficult for some artists, who feel uncomfortable being social with strangers on the internet, as Baym’s study (2012) shows.