Social media and the music industry.

Breaking into the music industry has changed, with artists no longer relying on old-school tactics to try and land a record deal. Technology has disrupted the music business like bands creating location aware based albums. MySpace used to be the social networking site of choice for aspiring artists. The once popular site has been attributed to launching the careers of Lily Allen and Soulja Boy, as well as boosting sales of already established artists. But, MySpace dropped 10 million unique visitors at the start of 2011, bringing users down to 63 million compared to Facebook’s 500 million users.

Now-a-days it appears three websites are critical to the advancement of aspiring artist's careers; Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. These social media platforms allow artists to develop an online career through the creation of profiles, uploading of content, sharing of daily habits, and allowing their fans to directly provide feedback about their work. According to an article by Alexandra Topping, it is this new interactivity afforded to the public, which puts "the power of discovery into the hands of fans".

Social media has become the phenomenon it is today for people in the music industry, due to the interactive nature of social media; smaller labels and less mainstream artists can now spread the word about their talents for the world to see.

Ideas to explore:

• A tips section for how to begin your social media career.
• How the social media revolution affects the way music is produced 
• Income for artists
• What legal ramifications are there for artists and fans in terms of copyright material, sharing of files and defamation.
• What online music means for the record labels

group meeting - idea development

Just thought i'd post everything that Maddy typed out the other day onto the blog page.

Target Audience: Emerging and aspiring musicians navigating the digital world.

Aim: To encourage and help aspiring artists to gain the skills, information and platforms to be heard in the music industry.

Our Issue: The impact of new media platforms on the music industry.

 Target audience: aspiring musicians.
- (Research more into audience) Where are these people going already? What media is already relevant to them?

Ideas for pages

Dispersed throughout the website:
- Have our own photos
- Have our own videos
o Identifiably our own photos and videos through style etc.
- Embed a media player to play automatically when the website is opened.
o Soundcloud?

- Simon Callwell, established DJ, works at AIM. INTERVIEW
o Independent
o Tips for how to get started etc.

- Legal section
o “How to protect your intellectual property”
o How much of a concern is this for new artist?
o Rebecca campbell interview (Posse)
• “Changing dynamic and hierarchy in music industry”
• Death of the producer
• Role of social media in music production

- Amanda Palmer, “kickstarter.com” (online platform)
o Success story
o Funding
o Compare with someone who failed in same field

- Larry Page (music producer in the 60s and 70s)
o Interview
o What does he think of the way the music industry has changed?
o Does he think what has happened to the music industry is positive?

- Rick Chen
o “Pozzible”

- Virtual Communities/ Cult followings
o The role of social media

- Top 5 aspiring artists of the month
o Engage audience by getting them to vote, give feedback to other musicians

- Create forums
o Expert? Or group chatroom?
o Moderator could be resident expert.

- Add for the website’s “end of year summer jam”

- Gig guide page
o Information about upcoming gigs
o Reviews of gigs

 

This site has been archived but it contains some relevant material and good interviews. The guy who launched this blog, Nick Crocker, has been a bit of a digital pioneer when it comes to music blogging and building communications & music industry websites, like We Are Hunted and  Native Digital.

For those who didn't see the AManda Palmer Kickstarter success story yet, look here. Her fundraising target was $100,000 and she raked in more than a million... awesome!

A helpful website for aspiring artists

It seems we are all interested in creating a website that includes music, the issue of copyright or perhaps piracy, and how the internet and social media controls this today. It seems like there are a lot of websites for "music lovers" to find new music, and there are websites that create platforms for musicians to upload their music and promote themselves, however I haven't come across a website that provides direct tips to musicians trying to get their music off the ground- A website that is directed solely towards aspiring musicians that has articles that are relevant or helpful, e.g. "How to be seen online", or "Steps to avoid music theft" etc. Aside from this we could also have a "news" page which keeps artists up to date on all the latest online sites, opportunities and perhaps some "success stories" where artists share their experiences.

There are three articles on Mashable that triggered the idea for this website which might be useful to read:

http://mashable.com/2012/08/13/google-pirate/

http://mashable.com/2012/08/15/mtv-artists-platform-launch/

http://mashable.com/2012/08/15/silversun-pickups-romney/

If we are going to focus on online music communities, this article could be of interest.

Might have to kick things off with a little linkage... so, here you have it... some thoughts on Copyright in a digital world from industry blog Music Think Tank... they seem to be doing the kind of thing that we talked about doing... could be worth looking at. They seem to have an active, engaged community (most posts seem to have a lot of comments)... what do you think makes them interesting/worth following? Have you guys heard of Seth Godin? He's a bit of a communications/innovation/marketing guru... you can probably find a bunch of cool TED talks featuring him. He is also a very successful, highly-followed blogger. Could be worth a look in too.