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NEW MEDIA AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
NEW MEDIA AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Ashlee Villasenor & Bryce Brakebill
The purpose of our project is to analyze how new media, specifically social media, has impacted the music industry. We will provide an analysis and comparison of the music industry prior social media and currently. Within these guidelines we will look at fan interaction, consumption and advertisement.
FAN INTERACTION
Fan communities, Culture within Communities, Musician-Fan interaction
Throughout each section we linked the articles which we used to present how social media has impacted the music industry. Also feel free to go through the website in whatever order. Some pages have a learn more option, but mainly the introduction paragraphs will briefly outline what each page is about.
FAN COMMUNITIES AND CULTURES
Nancy Baym
Nancy Baym in her interview with Bandzoogle, discusses how the introduction of social media has impacted fan communities. She states that even before “social media” was introduced there were already “online fandoms”, but that they were confided to smaller groups online, like web broads or mailing lists (Baym). Either way the introduction of social media or social networks has allowed fans to gain “more power and influence” because there are more ways for fans to interact with each other and the artists (Baym). Baym states that a downside of social media is it has “decentralized fandom[s]”, by this she means that before within the small fan communities there were “in group identities and norms”, but now in larger fan communities its difficult to manage (Baym).
“Those sites can be useful for information sharing and foster fan-to-artist/artist-to-fan communication, but they’re lousy for fan-to-fan communication. In that sense it’s a step backwards for fandom (Baym).”
MUSICIAN-FAN INTERACTION
Zachary Evans, Kate Franklin
“Giving the power back to musicians and their fans is a massive paradigm shift within the music industry. Before musicians began embracing social media, music labels carried a huge majority of the power when it came to what music made it into the hands of consumers.” Zachary Evans
Social media has made it easier for fans to interact with their favorite artists because they have the means to follow and interact with them on numerous platforms. This allows them to establish a close connection to the artists.
A shift in music
ADVERTISMENT
Here we will focus how the industry has been impacted by social media, specifically on how their advertisement of artists has changed.
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
“Artists interact with their fans to the ways in which artists promote new music and gain new followers.” Tim Alan
Social media allowed there to be a large shift in how music and musicians were advertised. It allowed for the promotion to be in the hands of the artist instead of record labels, as it was in the past. Social media also allowed artists to be more visible on popular platforms and utilize it to advance their careers. Fans also play a big role in advertisement for artists because they encourage others to listen to their favorite artist. Therefore they are free advertisement.
ARTIST PROFILES AND ONLINE PRESENCE
“We are now in an age where the artist—their image, personality, online presence, and overall profile—is just as much of a product being sold as the music that artist makes.” Wolfgang Gartner
Ever since social media was introduced musicians found it essential in promoting their work and with it came an online personality. From a PR perspective, as stated in Gibsone’s article No such thing as bad PR: Is social media saving or damaging the music industry?, artists have two online personas, one that comes about with their interaction with fans, while other deals with what the media can use to write stories about them. Therefore, artists have to be smart with their social media usage because they are under the scrutiny of both their fans and the media.
INDEPENDENT ARTISTS
“Social media marketing also offers a cost-effective solution for bands and their managers to build buzz. For all up-and-coming bands still playing concerts in mom's basement, this has been a real game-changer. With the potential to reach an audience of millions through a retweet by an influencer, artists can launch their career before it even starts.” AJ Agrawal
Social media has offered independent artists multiple platforms where they can make a name for themselves. They can be involved in every aspect of their rise to fame. Prior social media it would have been more difficult for independent artists to make a name for themselves because the music executives controlled the music industry.
CONSUMPTION
Different forms of music consumption, negative and positive impacts
With the introduction of the internet it opened new doors for different ways of consuming music. Nowadays there are digital streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora. Artists of any magnitude can put their music on these sites, even though they are not receiving enough compensation for their music, they know it can bring them more fans. The music industry has also shifted in terms giving fans the ability of just listening to an artist's singles instead of having to purchase their whole album. Illegal downloads have also impacted the industry a lot, and these websites came about and are spread through social media, which have large implications on the artists.
