The Connection Between Social Media and Artiste
SOCIAL MEDIA
An artiste must maintain a solid social media presence in this day and age. Social media platforms (such as Instagram, YouTube, etc.) are
perhaps the “cheapest” promotional tools and platforms available for artistes. It serves as a platform to grow your fanbase, interact with
existing ones, promotes your work, and disseminate information regarding your music and plans. Utilising social media is not just for upcoming artistes. Even established artistes must constantly engage their social media pages to keep growing and increasing visibility. An established artist who ignores this may not necessarily see a significant decline in their fanbase but will have lost new fans that could have been added to an already large fanbase if they consistently engage their social media
pages.
Amongst other things, social media helps your music to be found. No matter how great a song is, if no one hears it, no one will know how great
it is, and fans will sleep on it. An artiste should be concerned with how to engage social media to increase their visibility and reach. Below, we
shall consider a few of these social media platforms and how you can engage with them to increase your visibility.
As one of the most rapidly growing platforms, Instagram has continually been the go-to for most artistes. No other social media offers artistes a
better opportunity to capture their digital presence online than Instagram. The app has numerous features that artists can exploit, such
as the main feed post, stories, reels, captions etc. For example, stories are probably Instagram’s best features and are well-suited for subscribers
who love to share content. Artistes can create lyric videos through Instagram stories, post links to their tours, releases etc., and give some insight into their daily routine or life through the feature. The app also has Instagram TV, where artistes can shoot and or post-pre-prepared edited content for up to 60 (sixty) minutes. This means that artistes can post various content, ranging from behind the scenes, studio time, preparation for shows, covers, music videos, etc. By doing this, the artiste can create content that fans can engage with and give them more insight into the life of the artistes.
YOUTUBE
YouTube is an application that doubles as both a social media app and streaming platform, as music and videos can be uploaded directly on
the app. Most artistes have official pages where they release music videos. YouTube is arguably the only app used worldwide for the release
of music videos. Even record labels have YouTube pages, through which they release videos. YouTube, however, is also a platform that allows for
interactions, as one can share content (mostly videos), make comments
on such content, and even have live streams.YouTube is a giant social media app, as it is the second biggest search engine globally. As an artiste, you must learn to utilise both YouTube’sstreaming and social media services. A healthy mix of this will lead to more content for fans, invariably leading to more visibility for the artiste.
For example, an artiste can post their music videos and post other types of videos on the app. The content posted can also be monetised, leading
to some form of revenue for the artiste as well.
TIKTOK
This app has gradually become the joker card of the music industry, as it has become an app that can singlehandedly make a star or revive the
career of an ailing artiste organically. It is also the chosen app of the younger generation and mainly the desired app of the gen z. As music-
based app, your song can be uploaded to its database, and anyone can use the music in any video.
What makes it a dangerous and essential app for music is that when a song is used for a particular purpose that is trendy and catches on, many
more people jump on that trend, which helps the song go viral. For example, the app was responsible for Lil Nas X’s rise to prominence in
the music industry. The song has also been responsible for marketing other songs and raising them into mainstream music.
The Connection Between Social Media and Artiste
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