You might have read my other blog about how artists now are more influencers. The latest in the debate is that the whole social media has started to shrink and go away. And of course, you can read it in the music industry first. Already we got reports that in 2022 only 5% of the music that we listened to was new music and that number should be as low as 2% in 2023. I haven’t seen any report yet but when you listen to outlets like the radio (yes I still listen to the radio in the car, didn’t have the time to connect my phone to the Bluetooth) they just play music from 70:s to 90:s. I know, who listens to the radio anyway.

I guess though that radio is out as much as social media. According to the research company, Gartner, 50% of real users will leave social media this year or at least stop using it on a big scale. At the same time, AI is coming loose and will now easily fill our channels with content. Just random content the algorithm thinks I would like, so far it has been pretty bad on that, so I don’t give any hope that the AI content will be any good.

Social media makes everything also into your own bubble. I can easily see that when Spotify presented the most played songs in Sweden a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t recognize 50% of the artists on that chart. Never heard of them. Never saw anything from them, not existing in my bubble. 85% of the song I had never heard either. Many raise their voice that you have a hard time getting a feeling of what people really like or what they think and by that, you have a hard time finding something new since the algorithms just feed you something it thinks you like.

This is the problem for the megastar, they depend on everyone should know about you. The ones we see right now came at the beginning of this and surely came before the big explosion of AI. The new artist will have their fanbase, but it will be an exclusive bubble.

In this world that we are heading to it will become more important with real friends. In time when we start to work more from home, then it adds that we need to meet real people. This of course also will affect music. The algorithms totally failed to present what was most listened to last year. I work in the industry so it should pick up how much I research new music, but still, it fails.

Of course, it will fail, it is the same still. Almos all new music I discover comes from tip-offs from people that I trust. That is nothing new than how it was already before the internet and still will be. Sure, that can be from a friend in a chat group, but a friend and a real person, are not a suggested thing. Then I can get into that fan bubble of that artist. Still, we will be working against the algorithm that gets paid to say something else. Still, if the researchers are right then the suggestion will come in real time with real people. Then we are back to the marketing of how it was done in the very early times, let’s go out there and play live. That will kill many of the influencer artists as well since they don’t have time to tour because they need to update their channels all the time.