People has to talk about you in a genuine way.

Some people went nuts that Facebook will change their algorithms so that you see more messages from friends and close relatives and not so much from groups or pages that you follow.

Of course, that affects all the fan pages for artists. And it will affect the things you send out for free as an artist, especially if you are an independent smaller artist.

At the same time, we are now really talking about the different bubbles. Everything has its own bubble and social media is getting these bubbles much stronger. I have talked a bit about the Spotify bubble. People tend to look to Spotify for the figures. The problem is that it really tells you nothing. I know several artists with very high numbers but no useful fanbase. Much of the music on Spotify is used as background music which makes the numbers not telling what is really popular.

Same with Facebook, your friend will like the kind of same music as you do. The chit-chat will be around that concert that everyone likes or the new that all your friends like. And the friends that are not into it the system will put off and tag along with people that like the same music. In the end, you get a bubble with people that are all thinking the same. And of course, in that bubble, it will look that this artist is very big.

So forcing people to talk about it or spread your stuff will not be that effective. In reality, you need people talking about you in a very natural way so you reach out in different bubbles. Suddenly when enough bubbles are reached if will just flood out. The problem here is the algorithms change so it's not certain how this is done. Persistence is one thing and also making good music that people like to tip off about is another. Also showing up in unexpected places is something that takes people to talk about you. What is not working is ad:s, newspapers. Even TV has problems nowadays.

The facebook groups will be more a place for superfans to gather and really indulge in an artist. But the superfans is usually just 5% of the whole audience. At the same time, I like Taylor Swift but I have no desire to read about her love life or what clothes she is wearing. I could go to a concert it would be fun, but I don't I would queue to get tickets. I'm the fanbase that will be hard to reach, the mediocre fanbase that is needed for the numbers. Still, I talk about Talyor Swift here so she has done it right.

The circles are to small

Right now it seems like everything are in small circles. Social media is feeding you from a very narrow audience and also let you just reach a narrow audience. And it's not easy to get into the new circles.

I just saw some nominations for awards in Sweden and you can see this affects the nominations. Some manage to reach out in many circles, the impact though varies. But most are just in one circle. In this case, you have the circle with indie people in Stockholm. All nominations are on bands in their own circle. There are so much bigger acts that have done so much more but they re not in these people circles and with social media they really not getting any new stuff getting their way. I got nominations for some of my really small releases, but these are the kind that really fits into their circle.

It's not just to be reaching the circle it's reaching it several times on different levels. Here these nominated bands are getting around in this circle several times, but not with my help, by there own social media.Still, they are so small and will never breakout outside the circle.

So to make it bigger you have to be in many circles and for that, you have to use so many people. It's like hiring five pr agencies that reach different circles all the time to get your message out.
Then if you manage to do that you will be quite established and have no worries to reach all the circles.