Music’s Unfortunate Social Media Side Hustle
As the digital age of music gives way to the need for social media and everything it brings, and lacks, the question of what it all means needs to be asked. This media.com exploration takes a shot.
Twitter created a very different type of environment. Music fans followed their favorite artists and bands and saw a feed of 140-character bursts of texts and images—ranging from personal to promotional to mental breakdown. The entertainment industry quickly implemented Twitter into the social media portfolio. Artists and labels realized once again the value of having a high follower count and the promotional opportunities it provided.
But Twitter was lacking one feature that the sites before it had—music. There was no music player, no artist homepage with clips of music. Instead Twitter put the focus on people, and essentially, personality. This was the first forum where many artists, actors, public figures and the like felt comfortable to be themselves and take off their PR armor for a bit.
In the context of the music industry, it created the most open communication forum yet between fans and artists (and between fellow artists), giving artists the chance to let their true personalities and deepest thoughts out to a huge following. Many of us shed our armor and opened up; we told all of our followers about the bad day we were having and other personal details of our lives. We humanized ourselves, and fans began to have a sense of kinship with people they might have once idolized.
Read the whole story here.
