Social media might not be the way for an artist.

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.

This is how you do to get real fans.

4) Your Follower Numbers Don’t Matter As Much As Your Real Life Numbers

Oh really, you have 100,000 Instagram followers? Cool. Oh, you can’t pay your monthly bills? Not so cool. Everyone knows followers AND engagement can be bought. Follower numbers aren’t as impressive as CONVERSION numbers. How many people are actually backing your crowdfunding campaigns, showing up to your shows, buying your merch? Just because you got bots to Like (and comment) on your shit means nothing. Well, it means you’re desperate and have no desire to make a living with your music. Bots don’t come to shows. Bots don’t buy your merch. Bots don’t back your crowdfunding campaigns. Bots don’t support you in any way financially. Bots don’t help you become a full-time musician.

We are now living in a post-follower count reality.

Don’t tell me how many followers you have. All I care about are how many fans you have who are willing to support your career.

The red part is from an article in Digital music news, here is a link to the whole article.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/27/millennial-musicians/

This has passed on to the pros in the music industry. Still, 90% of the business thinks these numbers counts, so this is not just a misunderstanding by the artists, most of the industry is equality dumb. Just a couple of months I was at a meeting called "Off the record" arranged by IFPI of Sweden. They presented a new company that was built on that they would take artists out of the streaming numbers and social media numbers. I was baffled. This we tried 2010 now it was 2017. I mean the majors tried this five years ago with Spinnup and failed heavily. I just wanted to stand up and just scream how stupid and behind they are. I just left straight after with no network. It's a big reason I don't want Swedish music industry on my panels when I talk (i choose the good ones, there are starts in the darkness), sorry to say in this field they are so damn after. Even worse was that this company also ripped the artist off of different incomes.

We will be in this mess at least in five to ten years more. I meet people all the time that talks that about numbers like it would matter. 2015 we stopped this after we saw the results of Major Lazers - Lean on. They got million of streams but when they played in Stockholm they only could sell 900 tickets in a venue with 1500 capacity. In reality, they should have sold out in an arena with 50 000 people if the numbers were correct.

Like the text says, the numbers don't show how many who really care. Like AC/DC fill out that arena three times in a week and they are not even on Spotify. But yes people care about AC/DC. To be honest no one knew about Major Lazer it took them until now and several hits to be close to where they should have been in 2015.

We took the decision to build an artist from scratch the old way that year. Don't care so much to have the biggest numbers. More to have the real numbers with people that care. Sure it's not easy and with the stupidity, you get overruled many times with talentless artists that have used bots to take your space. Our strategy was to build up a live show that was easy to take around and get people an experience. We looked quite much on the EDM scene that was fading and realized that people were tired of a guy standing behind a computer waving a hand. They just started to add explosions and stuff then but the audience was still lost.

Of course, we got critic from the artist that often felt that their numbers were too low. Still, we wanted to reflect what we did. Instead, we pinpointed places to go over and over again to build up a crowd and build a base to stand on just locally. The new thing was to spread these bases over the world at once. in the old days, you started with your own country, we started abroad.

Yes, it's really tempting to boost your numbers. But it will come back and bite you in the ass. We are back in the 50:s where you broke and artist by showing them to people. When you reach a certain massive point it will work by it self. The good part is that it's more outlets than in the 50:s, the bad part is the same you are competing against the whole world.

What you have to do is stand your ground, take every chance to show off your art. The express highways are not that attempting. Yes, it takes longer than before to make it today. Pick these suoerfans one by one, the tools to keep them is here.

11 Things Millennial Musicians Just Don’t Get, streams and fans.

I got this article in my feed and it's brilliant. As an artist (not just millennial) you have to read it to start to understand that some of the features are no longer there.

Here is the whole article
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/27/millennial-musicians/

I will discuss the 11 things what to do about them and how you should think. So we start with number one.

1) Spotify Plays Don’t Equal Fans

I can’t tell you how many artists I see on Spotify with hundreds of thousands or millions of streams, but can’t get even 100 out to their local (or any) shows. Or get anyone to back their crowdfunding campaign. Or support them in any way whatsoever. These listeners are not fans of the artists, they are fans of the playlist these songs got included on. You must understand this new world of streaming we are in. 10 million plays ain’t impressive anymore. Know what is impressive? Bottom lines.

The number crunching is really over. Sure we will have stupid people doing the number crunching for at least ten years more. The serious players though has just left that game. I wrote about this in the blog post "We don't care about your social media numbers"

The smart part of the industry knows you can manipulate any numbers and it's kind of easy to check so it gives no guarantee. You have to build real fans that are the only way. Still, right now it's easier than ever to actually do that. There are hundreds of different tools to use to keep in touch with the people who like the stuff you do. So staring yourself blind that you don't have that many Spotify streams is not getting you anywhere. When you get real fans and the word is spreading anyway it will come by the fault. So start doing what you should do, take every opportunity to perform your art in all possible ways. That is the secret trick. No, you can't just sit home and think you can do it behind your computer.

So when you bump into a stupid booker that only book bands that have over 50 000 followers on Facebook. Whatever this person is booking for it will go down fast. It won't be in your interest to be there anyway. In reality, many times they use that as an argument to not book you since you are not good enough. When you hit that value they won't care if you just have 10 followers on facebook.

Who did you played with?

Yes we are in the demo week in the blog. Taking out issues that we see from the demos we got in. Since I had several friends over drinking beer listening on demos I also got the most comments on what they thought failed in the presentation or music.

This you get a lot, bands they artist has played with. This is kind irrelevant information. I mean The Magnettes played on Summerfest, but I want write about all the other bands that played on the festival. Like The Magnettes shared stage with Bob Dylan, The Chainsmokers and Wille Nelson. Sure they played there too but have no effect. Even that Red Hot Chili Peppers came down and saw them would make it to the bio. It’s good for social media but not in the bio.
Here is The Magnettes hanging out with Chad from Red Hot Chili Peppers and David from Summerfest

It’s even worse when the band start to point out bands that you really don’t know who it is. Yes most of you would know Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bob Dylan. These are household names. But even if you think that this band from your hometown is kind of big it’s not big enough. Even the artist that came number five in idol is not good enough or if they have been in eurovison. So only household names.

This also counts for if you were back singer to bigger artists or hired musician for a bigger artist. This won’t affect your career or make you a better musician. Rather that you look upon it that maybe this is your normal occupation and your own career comes in second place. This counts also saying taht you have been study on some musical school, it's good but not any good info for us.

The only time it’s relevant is if you are supporting big name on a big tour. That can be a good thing. Still watch out for it since that would direct lead the A&R:s looking on your Facebook and Instagram band check your numbers. Sayings like: Well they support Iron Maiden on this tour and only have 5000 followers’ ion Facebook that is not that good.

Let the past be the past and tell us what you are planning to do, that is much more interesting.