It’s Official: Music Has Gone Social
The hottest singers, rappers, and musicians out there today have taken the industry to a whole new level by bursting onto the social media scene and owning it with a fierce passion. They have raised the bar, making tweeting, updating your Facebook status, and posting on YouTube just as essential part of being a successful artist as coming out with catchy and provocative music. Innovators like Lady Gaga and John Mayer have changed the game forever; check out how your favorite artists are re-inventing what it means to be a musical celebrity through social media!
In the past year, social media has hit several landmarks – someone reached over ten million fans on Facebook and the record for most watched video on YouTube was broken. Interestingly, both of these big deal moments happened to musicians. As of July sixth, Lady Gaga had surpassed her previous record of ten million Facebook fans and was quickly blowing through eleven million on her way to uncharted waters of social media power. Simultaneously, she lost her battle with sixteen year old crooner Justin Bieber for the title of most watched video on YouTube. Her megahit “Bad Romance” was finally surpassed by Bieber’s pop frolic “Baby.” At almost two hundred and fifty million hits, his song has become the most watched video of all time on the leading video website.
The question is, does this social media music explosion speak more to the nature of social media or the changing music industry? Perhaps a little of both. There is no doubt that social media has been for the last few years, and continues to be “where it’s at.” Stars and millions have been made on the instant and somewhat strange pages of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, causing them to become staples in both business and personal life. Social media is now a benchmark of both your success in your particular industry – a credibility factor – and a gauge of how popular you are as a person. It is high school all over again, and it promises to be a perpetual high school as long as the servers at these mammoth sites can handle the incredible traffic they are getting.
But this shift also speaks to the changing nature of the music industry. Like the publishing world, the digital era has hit the traditional pillars of music pretty hard. Songs are leaked way before their release date, and often whole albums are available for free download before the iTunes pre-sale even starts. iTunes and other digital vendors have cut into the profits of record labels and CDs, well, they are going the way of the dinosaur. Just like authors struggling to remain relevant in a digital era, musicians are being asked – nay, required – to promote their music, their brands, and their record labels on social media just to stay alive.
This relationship between social media and music success is turning into a cycle that upcoming and future musicians cannot ignore: if you aren’t online using social media constantly and to its fullest limits, you might was well just keep singing in the shower. And the bar is continuing to be set higher and higher as absolute superstars like Gaga and Bieber reinvent the criteria it means to have real musical success.
Vera Mosley is an expert in social media and SEM. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music streaming websites, reading and attending dance classes.
I honestly don’t know how Gaga and Justin did it but I definitely would love to know who their Social Media Advisor are! It’s just absolutely crazy…
If you got the money and the popularity, its quite easy to have a thousand followers with in a week. You can hire top notch Advisor to do all the things mention here. Social Media is one of the best tools you can use today to promote new albums or any product online and connect to millions of fan out there.
Social Media is the most effective tool that celebrities can have. It helps them become more famous in the industry. Just like Justin Bieber, he has got the fame than Lady Gaga. I think, Justin has more techniques among his co-singers. Really shows that competition is the main ingredient that will give them more fame.
Social life of many celebrities is correlated to the social media wherein it appears that this can help their being in the pedestal. Celebrities really have unique ways in doing to outdone the others.