Conclusion

From what I've gathered, using social media is an essential component of promotion for an artist, but for emerging musicians, it is a struggle to get noticed by anybody. I've also found out that many large online music streaming services give artists a minuscule cut of what they make from each song. All of this leaves musicians in a precarious position, as they can't afford to not be connected to their audience, but there are some pretty major downsides to doing so.

Is New Media Ripping Artists Off?

Data will show you that Internet fame is also only a minor asset to a performer’s income. An article by The Guardian claims that an album released on iTunes, an artist makes $2.30 to every $9.99 sold, on Spotify, an artist makes 0.3% of the money made from any given playing of their song, and on YouTube, the artistic revenue is $0.0018 to the dollar. This in combination with the fact that websites, including Facebook, often make artists pay money to reach a wider audience spells doom for many independent working musicians who rely on the Internet as substantial income revenue and who haven’t necessarily got the money to pay a regular fee just to reach an audience.

Why Do So Many Musicians Find it So Hard To Get Noticed?

We can gather that for musicians, not having a presence in social media is not an option, however, the market is, to a degree, flooded with millions of musical artists who have the same idea: to promote themselves and their music to a wider market. This over flooding of options makes it harder for consumers to wade through the sea of many unappealing options to find a diamond in the rough. Social media also has a tendency to favor putting already well known bands above unknown ones in terms of suggestions for listeners, making it all the harder for unknown artists to get recognition. Lett says, “The broadness of social media in terms of its options for artists is both its greatest strength and its weakness. If you can manage to get enough of a following, Facebook will start putting you closer to the top of the search bar, but that requires some really hard, arduous offline work including just giving yourself to any venue that will have you, playing at weddings and bar-mitzvahs and the like, just basically whoring yourself out to whoever will take you on, and even so, the audience at these places very possibly either won’t like you or won’t pay you any attention. You’ve just got to keep pushing through and advertising yourself to the audience all the time; like every three songs.”

Why Do Musicians Need Social Media?

This rule applies, not least of all, to musicians. Any band or artist you are likely to think of, be they prominent or obscure, is liable to connect with their fans through a social media page. Working musician and music teacher: Rhys Lett uses Facebook to advertise both his performances and his music school: Eastern Suburbs School of Music. In an interview I conducted with him, Rhys said “today, you don’t have any choice in the matter; if I refused to advertise myself online, I’d be locking myself out from potentially hundreds of students or hundreds of people in the audience who would not have come if they hadn’t seen my post or if one of their mates hadn’t shared it on their timeline.”

Introduction

In a modern world, all endeavors, regardless of how old or well established has to rely, at least in part on the all-encompassing field of new media. There is practically no business, artist, service or company that does not stay in touch with its audience and customers through the realm of social media. In a day and age where three quarters of all Internet users (1.5 billion out of approximately 2 billion people) use social media, it is essential to the providers of any goods and services to make a reach out to this massive potential market, to let them know about upcoming events, deals and products.