I just read an article around social media on a business site. Really interesting reading. It’s in Swedish and you need to subscribe to read it so no point to link it here.

Still, it really got my attention because it enlighted a phenomenon I have been watching for some time but hasn’t got to the music industry yet. The music industry is not leading the media any longer, is just a follower. The death of reach in social media. In the article, they compare posts that got viral 2017 with today just two years later and new algorithms make it’s impossible to get viral. Same that big number of followers would help. And an account with millions of followers has the same problem as a small account. Yes, we are back to where your My Space page is as powerful as the rest of your social media channels. We are going back to basics here.

This is the death of many of the theories in the music industry. Something I more or less predicted when many were talking that you can do a career in big data. With a landscape that is in constant change, the data also lose value very quickly. It is not that effective. At least not for an upcoming artist. The stupid Spotify numbers you get are totally useless. I saw an old dude that gives out crappy country songs being over happy that people from 56 countries had streamed his songs. The big problem he doesn’t know who they are, how they streamed it or if they are even real. My guess is they are mainly miss streamed on a playlist somewhere. The music is really crap. My guess is also that these people never listen again or skipped after 30 seconds. In the end, it’s just useless data.

So if Spotify is useless. Social media is useless. What is there? Of course real fanbase. But how do you get that? Real networking. The digital things are just good tools to communicate with people that you already have got in your circles. It’s not so much a tool to reach people any longer. On if you do it with real people with real feelings.

Three years ago I already had a hunch around this. Instead, I saw a need to talk to people in person. The human contact is unbeatable in the digital world. I sat out to build the biggest network I could for three years. Actually, I put in a five-year plan but my gut feeling says that it’s ready for a beta test right now.

For the past three years, I have been visiting fifty showcase festivals. Being networking my ass off. Meet wonderful people from around the world. My guess is that I have one of the stronger networks in the industry right now. Lets put everything to a test.

I will be totally open in the blog over the next half-year on how I will work an artist career. And everything in the new system where data is secondary.

So who is the artist? I have chosen The Magnettes because they are on their second album and have a spot that will suit this mission.

I know this is really risky. This can easily crash. Then you will follow a crash in real time. Still, my gut feeling to be able to make things work the human connection is a must. Time to prove all computer geeks that so far its just empty words. We still have many years until this can be done by big data or social media. So I post this on the first post of the new year. And let the ball run.