With the new digital era, social networking websites became an effective way of promotion and marketing to artists since they are very popular and it enables direct connections with fan bases and fan promotion. MySpace is one of example of a popular social networking that many artists used for promotion - however it is good to remember that MySpace has now lost its popularity. In more recent times, Facebook and Twitter are the ones most popular to create a fan base as it enabled the artist to share multimedia and also enabled the fans to promote and interact with the artist. YouTube is another popular social networking website which effectively promotes artists as it allows subscribers, they can share videos and fans can comment, like and favourite which also allows some interaction.
Click in the icons to open the website.
A very famous example of an artist who built her fan base via the social networking website MySpace is Lily Allen. She already had a low record deal, but it wasn't until 2005 when she joined MySpace that she became a celebrity. She cleverly used the social networking to promote her music and build a fan base. She not only used it to distribute her music, as she used it to keep in touch with her fan base and deliver exclusive content to them as for example through her blog. She would also distribute multimedia including photos of music video shots, behind the scenes footage, daily video footage of Lily at home, etc, which gave the fans insight into Lily as a person creating an intimacy that was impossible before the internet.
(Source: http://www.vanseodesign.com/social-media/lily-ann/)
JME is an independent grime artist who uses Twitter to directly interact with his fans and launch promotions that encourage his fan base to buy his records (e.g. he delivered by hand an iPad to a fan as an award for sending him an album proof of purchase.
Ed Sheeran was an independent artist, he had EPs released but didn't get notice until he posted an online video displaying his diverse style through sbtv.co.uk, which led the rapper Example to invite Sheeran to tour with him. Ed Sheeran grew his fan base via YouTube and he became increasingly popular through the internet (viral).
Now Ed Sheeran also uses Facebook to promote himself and keep in touch with his fan base. He leave messages directed at his fans explaining what he has been doing, he shares some multimedia, he shares links of websites and he asks for votes.
As for my artist I believe I also would like to use YouTube and Facebook to promote his work as I believe Facebook is the most popular social networking that enables you to use a variety of different functions (share links, share photos, share videos, comment, write public messages) and it enables fan promotion (through liking or sharing material in their own social circle). YouTube is also a powerful mean of promotion because if people want to listen to music that is where they often go to. I believe both social networks have a quite wide audience but there is this emphasis on the younger audiences, which suits with our audience too. We could create an YouTube channel for our artist where he would upload videos that would promote him, and we could use Facebook to create a fan page like Ed Sheeran's.
Oh.!!! these is a good idea to use famous social networking sites to promote music and build a fan base. Also check Lily Allen's music on it sometime.
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