Social media within a music campaign - introduction

I am doing some research into social media and the role that it plays in the music campaign of a band or artist. The reason I am doing some research into this topic is so that it can help me develop a social media for our band during the post production stage of our music video. 

Social medias are all huge platforms that are used by a lot of people across the globe. Here is a list of the top 10 most used social medias of 2021. *MAU = Monthly Active Users

1. Facebook (Meta) - 2.7 billion MAUs (this is roughly 34.8% of the world population)

2. Instagram - 1.2 billion MAUs

3. Twitter 

4. TikTok

5. YouTube - 2 billion MAUs (however, it doesn't count as this as not everyone on YouTube is making content - YouTube also has a force of about 30 million users subscribed to YouTube premium and YouTube music)

6. WeChat

7. Whatsapp - Whatsapp (owned by Facebook) has already overtaken Facebooks "Facebook messenger" service in the amount of users that it has

8. MeWe

9. Tumblr - with over 518.7 blogs on the site in 2021

10. Reddit - 48 MAUs

These numbers show how vast social networks have become since the worlds first social media (Six Degrees) was launched in 1997, just over 20 years ago. 

The most commonly used social medias that are used by artists and bands nowadays are Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube (primarily to release music videos or music), and Facebook. 

The social media used for our genre is more geared towards a younger generation, and so Facebook won't be as relevant. Some of the social medias used by pop-rock artists nowadays include Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. 

As you can see, Instagram and Twitter are the two medias out of the three that I briefly glanced at that look more used by the artists, and so I think that those are the two medias that I will be look at. Also, I don't think that TikTok would suit our band anyway, and so looking into different social medias would benefit me more than looking into TikTok. 

Marketing and Social Media:

Marketing is essentially creating awareness and demand for your product, and in our case it is creating awareness and demand for our band and their music. Before the internet and social media, and alongside the internet now other forms of marketing include

- Print media

- Billboards

- TV (adverts, talk shows)

- Radio

- And word of mouth

Now that the internet has become such a large resource, with around 4.66 billion people having access to it, you get online marketing and marketing through social medias and other platforms (like websites). 

Marketing online is not only cheap or often free, it is international, it can be easier to make a personal connection with the artist, band or celebrity, and you can get cases of interactive marketing. For example, you could comment on Avril Lavignes instagram, and she could like your comment, or you could Tweet about something relevant in the news and Jay Z could retweet you. This form of interaction is also good for maketing. 

When you market using social media, you get a direct target audience, a platform to sell directly to your audience, a full and true star image, interactive connections with your fans and you can create spreadable content. This is why so many institutions and people are on social media. It can be used as such a powerful tool of marketing, and with softwares like "cookies", your product can be promoted to someone who doesn't even know you if they are listening to slightly similar music. 

We are going to try and use social media as part of our music campaign for our band. I am going to research into two separate artists and their individual social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram. I am then going to create a timeline based off a critical or big point in their music career (for example an album release) and see what they did building up to the song release, the song release, and how they continue to promote it after, and how long they promote it after. The two artists that I am going to look at are Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne.