How has social media impacted the music industry in 2023?
It’s no secret that social media is a powerful and essential tool in growing a fanbase for music artists of all genres. First and foremost, social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok have provided artists with powerful marketing tools to promote their music and engage with their fans. Artists can use social media to share behind-the-scenes footage of recording sessions, offer sneak peeks of upcoming releases, and share personal details about their lives with their followers.
In addition, social media has helped to level the playing field in the music industry by providing a way for unsigned or independent artists to build their own following and gain exposure. Platforms such as SoundCloud and YouTube have become important tools for young and upcoming artists to share their music and connect with fans.
Social media has also impacted the way that hip hop artists collaborate and create music. With the ability to easily connect with other artists online, collaborations have become more common and faster to arrange. This has led to an increase in the number of features and collaborations on hip hop albums.
Overall, social media has had a significant impact on the hip hop industry, providing artists with new promotional tools, helping to democratize the industry, and changing the ways that artists create and distribute their music.
At Restless Fest in Austin at The Far Out Lounge hosted by Mike Ziemer and Third String Entertainment last week, I sat down with several incredible artists to hear more about their journey with social media and how it’s shifted their career for the better.
“I first got on TikTok during the Pandemic. It just became something fun to do, at first I was just making little, like, comedy videos, just me writing in my journal, just saying crazy outlandish stuff. And after a while it’s like, let me just try out putting my music on there, and not putting my music on there in a corny way, but just like a real raw way that’s like, yo, this is really how we are in the studio. We’re just loud, energetic, fun people. So, yeah, I mean, it’s really been a good tool for me to showcase my personality. I think outside of music, I’m a bit of an annoying person, so (laughs), it just gave me a platform to be annoying on and annoying things ended up working out!
When you first came up with your hit song, Billie Eilish, did you expect it to take off in the capacity that it did?
“I expected it to be really big. I didn’t know how soon or how fast it would happen, but I expected it to be really big. And then what (I thought) was really big at the time, like, for a successful song was a million streams… but now we’re like eight or nine months in and it’s at 600 million streams. It’s like, it’s a big difference in success (laughs).”
“Yo, if you’re an artist, you have to use social media. You can’t be an artist and just make music. You kind of have to create your own character. See, my character is JELEEL! Yeah. That identifies me, you know? So everybody as an artist, you have to find something that’s unique to you. Use social media, Instagram reels, TikTok videos. It’s hard to blow up these days, but if you use social media, you can, it can work.”
“To give a little rundown, my Instagram got deleted eight or nine months ago. I was verified and had 105,000 followers and all that fun stuff and somebody hacked my account and deleted it permanently. We were down bad for a couple months and I was like, man, I don’t know. I felt it was a hit to the gut and a hit to my music mindset for sure. And I was like, man, I don’t know if I can keep doing this. I felt like I worked so incredibly hard for everything for it to just be taken away. So I went through a whole turmoil thing for eight months, went on hiatus, didn’t do any music, didn’t do any shows, wasn’t on social media at all. And then I came back and everybody around me was basically saying, “If you stop now, then everything that you ever sacrificed wasn’t worth it”. So social media, it can help you, but it can also place such a dangerous part in things like your mindset or your career or however you want to view it. I think it’s just smart to not base your own career and self worth off of your social media, you know what I mean? It doesn’t matter if you’re verified or not, nobody really cares. Like anybody that actually is doing something, they don’t care if you’ve got a blue check mark next to your name.
Long story short, I had to realize that it was much more than just, you know, what I have to show for and what I’ve experienced with my music career and all that.”
“Social media has impacted my music career in too many ways. I mean, I feel like it’s the best way to self market yourself and self-promote. I’ve never worked with a label or anything. I’ve been a hundred percent independent, so social media has allowed me to be my own marketing team and everything.
“Social media helped me a lot ‘cause I ain’t have to have no job. I ain’t work. I have only had three jobs in my life. I worked at Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and then a bike shop. So social media helped me make money (and pursue music full time). Social media helped me grow my fan base and helped my family believe in me, because without them actually seeing it, they couldn’t believe it. It’s pretty much helped me do everything. Social media has helped me a lot.”
“Social media has had a huge impact on my career, bro. I know a lot of people’s careers in general, especially just with this generation of marketing, social media is just a straight direct market. If you’re an artist or a creative, you can do whatever it is that you do and post it right on the internet and boom, you have your market right there. I think it’s really badass. I know social media can actually be very toxic at times, but for a creative person it’s very much needed because how else would you market yourself without social media in this day and age, you know?”
Special thank you to Mike Ziemer, Dylan Lueking, Alex Myles and the entire Restless Fest team, as well as Anna Barringer, Jacqueline Reagor and Jaron Cass for making this event a huge success.
Image Credits: Madison Truscan
