I have seen
some really smart new things that bigger artists are doing. They just quit the
social media frenzy that is going on. I can really see this breaking through in
the lifestyle after the pandemic.

As it has
been for the past ten years record labels and managers and others have told
artists that they should own their fans and a lot of the success has been how
many followers you have on different social media accounts. Right now it seems
like all the bigger labels have a race to pick up things form TikTok. It has
been this way in all parts of the music industry except the live
scene.

Why not the
live scene. It is here the falseness of social media is shining through. Take an easy example. In the takeout of the Eurovision song contest in Sweden, they started
to invite influencers that had music into their social media channels. They
hoped that the influencers with their massive accounts could get more viewers
to the TV show. Since Eurovision in Sweden has the votes from the audience many
artists became nervous to get up against these massive social media account
since these people could just send a message and get a lot of people to vote for
their song. Over a period of three years, they tried to get these influencers
in. None of them even went to the final. Usually beaten by a new artist with no
social media followers at all when they entered the stage.

Another
thing is also that stars that have a big following also are beaten by a smaller
artist with fewer followers. You can fast conclude that the following on social media
doesn’t really matter in these cases. It’s still about the performance and the
song. People in social media really don’t care to vote or do things for artists. They just follow for the posts not for the art they are making.

Same phenomena
when a friend of mine signed the third biggest Youtuber in Sweden to his company
and started to release music. Yes, the first single became a media frenzy that this
Youtube would release music. So many went in and took a listen to it and today
it has a bit over five million streams on Spotify. The second single, then people knew that he was releasing music. But with over a million viewers on his
channel each mouth my friend calculated that people would still listen. Today that
has two million streams. The third single has today just 20 000 streams.
My friend, later on, singed more Youtubers but came to the conclusion that the
first is always going well, the next will have fifty percent then the first
one, then the third will have half of the half. In the end, if they release
things they more or less go backward then a normal artist that gains fans on
each release.

This was
influencers though that did something else and then was given songs. We see the
same though on artists that are artists in their channels on the live side.
Artists with millions of followers that are praised for their music won’t sell
any live tickets. Many of the booking agency went into that trap in the beginning.
Now it’s almost like a bad word telling people that they have a good social
media account. The only thing the booker looks at is the ticket sales from the
last concert in that area. same here people liked the songs in the posts but wouldn’t see them live. It’s two different media situations.

I get the feeling
that influencers are more or fewer artists in their own field. A bit like in the
80:s when either artist would do an acting career that never went off, or the
opposite when actors should do an artist career. They were good at their field,
stick to it. Same here stick on to what you good at.

Of course
you need to use your social media. When you release something it’s a good way
to spread the word. The problem is when you start to use the account like the
influencers. Suddenly you are more busy making updates then doing music. Your
fans will read more about your cat and what you ate for breakfast then what
they really came to know about you. My feeling is that also all this posting
makes the stress level on the artist really high. In the long run, it prevents the
artist’s top focus to write a really good song. In the middle of your inspiration
( what happen to me right now) is that your phone makes a beep and you pick it
up to see the latest message or point these systems give out. And gone is the inspiration!

My guess
right now is that a real artist must make a choice. Are you communicating with
music and songs, then social media should not be acted out as a big influencer
account! If you are communicating through an account and people like it that
way, well you are then an influencer, not an artist. And not just that you find a
good producer and songwriter to co-lab with makes you an artist. Don Johnson is
still just and acter though he wanted to be a rock star.

The problem
in the industry has been that the live side hasn’t had a major changeover in
the past 50 years. Now we see the big leap and in that leap, my guess is that your
live performance will be more crucial than ever. You will not have time to make
corrected posts. Instead, you need to be great at writing songs and perform them
in an amazing way for a real live audience. The changes in the live industry will
be with new venues, new networks and that will be a career of its own, With or
without social media number.