If musicians want to succeed, they must first become Internet celebrities?

author| Music pioneer Li Qinyu 

Recently, well-known American producer Rick Beato posted a video on YouTube criticizing Warner Music CEO Joe Kentish. The title was that record company executives accidentally exposed their incompetence, which sparked heated discussions.

In the video, Rick Beato quotes footage of Joe Kentish’s previous interview with music marketing agency Burstio.

When talking about signing artists by big record companies, Joe Kentish repeatedly emphasized keywords such as diligence and efficiency. His words seemed to indicate that if the artist did not have enough personal brand and fan support, big record companies would not be willing to cooperate with you. Topics such as talent, professionalism, and musicality don’t seem to be important in Joe Kentish’s discussions.

Rick Beato felt helpless by Joe Kentish’s repeated emphasis on diligence, efficiency, and fan base. He bluntly said that current record companies seem to have given up signing talented composers and spiritual singers, but are trying to find people who are good at social media.

When personality and traffic are gradually becoming key indicators to measure the success of artists, and musical skills and creative depth are relegated to secondary status, what does social platforms mean to artists?

If you want to succeed, you must first become an Internet celebrity?

Overseas netizens once joked in the comment section of this video that today’s record companies have three major requirements for artists: talented, web-sensitive, and silly Baitian who can’t understand contracts. rdquo;

Someone mentioned that even Dua Lipa, the artist signed by Joe Kentish, had the same experience. She had advantages that most artists did not have at the beginning of her career. She supported her entrepreneurial father and showed extraordinary music on YouTube since she was 14 years old. Talent and outstanding appearance. These factors work together to enable her to achieve good career development in the music industry based on her own talents.

According to the analysis of the Midia report, under an ideal state, Craft and Character show a relatively balanced trend, and the two intersect, and success lies in this intersection area. Therefore, superb musical skills and attractive personality characteristics jointly promote the artist’s success.

However, the current music industry places more emphasis on individuality and marginalized skills. The focus of success is more on character, and the balance between skill and personality has been unbalanced.

Data shows that social media now accounts for 17% of entertainment time, more than 13% of music streaming, and its soft influence far exceeds its share of time. Music has become a sub-chain in social media, which means artists are competing for attention with all other creators.

Today, social media deeply integrates music consumption, creation and profitability, completely reshaping the originally tense and alienated relationship between business and culture. Artists create music both stems from their personal artistic pursuits and are also inspired to create works that can attract users and increase traffic to streaming media and social platforms.

In addition, TikTok’s second annual “Music Impact Report” in 2024 shows that 84% of the songs on the Billboard Global 200 list were the first to become popular on TikTok, and another 12% of the songs began to become popular on TikTok after making the list., only 4% of the songs have not experienced viral spread on TikTok.

Under the dual effect of fierce market competition and profit pressure, record companies are increasingly inclined to reduce risks and investment, preferring to choose artists who have a fan base on social media. At the same time, the algorithmic mechanism of social platforms tends to push personalized content, which not only requires artists to focus on music creation, but also needs to continuously shape and strengthen their own public image, but it also makes it significantly more difficult for artists to achieve breakthroughs.

At the same time, record companies ‘balance between musicality and artist personality is also tilting, and the responsibility of marketing has almost completely shifted to artists. Artists often need to rely on their own social activities to shape their personal brands, attract fan groups, and increase the number of views of their works.

In short, artists are forced to become stars, record companies have to choose stars, and people are pushed to do more things that follow machine logic. Everyone is adapting to a system that increasingly focuses on personalization and social interaction. In fact, it’s no wonder artists and record companies are pandering to this system, because if they don’t, they may face the risk of failure.

Side effects of the musician role

From the perspective of musicians, running social media is generally positive, providing many independent musicians with previously difficult self-promotion tools and helping them get rid of their dependence on large record companies.

For example, Billy Corgan, the creator of the well-known American band The Smashing Pumpkins, will hold online fan Q & A sessions after the tour and will frequently respond to private messages; the British indie band Creeper even uses social media to build a storyline around the concept of each album and establish its own fan base.

In this case, why did Joe Kentish’s remarks arouse the artist’s dissatisfaction at a deeper level?

According to Luminate’s latest data, 36% of American listeners discover music through social media. Coupled with the fact that many mature musicians have made samples on social media, industry insiders often regard social platforms as a funnel, looking forward to transforming followers into listeners, and then into fans.

The reality is that this process is more like gold mining, where a large amount of gravel is sifted to find real gold, and most of the flow is lost like water.

Generally speaking, viral spread relies on passive fans, but artists ‘long-term success requires deeper active fans. When the artist’s role and network sense become the main entry point, listeners may ignore the artist’s music because they don’t like the artist ‘s personality; then, giving priority to personality makes listeners more likely to only listen to the music of the artist they like.

In addition, even if music marketers can assess the effects of viral transmission, it is often difficult to tell whether the song itself triggered the virus or the creator himself played a role. All they can observe is correlation, not causality.

Since artists must constantly cater to the needs of social platform algorithms, they may be too involved in shaping public image and have no time to focus on music creation itself, forcing the tempering of skills and the depth of music creation to take a back seat.

From a deeper level, this people-centered phenomenon not only limits the artist’s creative freedom, but also reshapes the listener’s music consumption behavior to a certain extent. Social media has made the music consumption process more immediate and superficial, and listeners ‘choices are often based more on the artist’s personal image and social interactions than on the in-depth experience of the music itself.

When a record company takes a fancy to an artist’s large number of fans on social media, it may seem that the company thinks this means that the artist is very popular and has potential. In fact, what reflects more is the role of the artist and whether this role conforms to the algorithms of social platforms.

Therefore, an artist’s success on social media often depends in part on the fit of his personality with algorithms and user portraits, rather than entirely on the true value or long-term potential of the musical work. The music industry’s reward mechanism seems to be more personalized to some extent than simply focusing on the music itself.

Allow some artists to stay away from social media

J Herskowitz, former Spotify product manager, once had the view that music and social are essentially opposed. The introduction of social functions has not only failed to add color to music products, but has instead challenged the purity of music as never before.

In fact, many artists also show some resistance to social platforms. Their concerns are not limited to the Internet giving the public more channels for voice, but also the invisible erosion of artistic personality by social media and even the potential oppression of creative freedom.

When music works are over-integrated into online culture, fans ‘expectations and feedback are no longer focused solely on the art itself, but are kidnapped by external factors such as fashion trends, personal images and even negative public opinion.

A typical example is Lana Del Rey’s announcement in 2021 that she would close her Instagram account, which has 30 million followers. She bluntly said that she needs to return her personal life to privacy, focus more on the creation itself, and avoid excessive interference from the outside world. The move represents an attempt by some artists to restore a purer connection with music creation by severing connections to social platforms.

After all, music should be a way for them to express their thoughts, emotions and artistic visions, rather than a vassal tied to the complex algorithms and intangible rules of social platforms. True art should be free and unrestricted, and music should not exist only as an entertainment commodity or social tool.

However, it is worth pondering that fans ‘dissatisfaction with new music and new things is not exclusively a product of social media.

Before the birth of the Internet, fans also expressed their dissatisfaction with artistic creation by writing letters, phone calls, and even face-to-face. From this perspective, social media only provides a more convenient and faster channel, but does not fundamentally change the nature of this phenomenon.

The rise of social platforms has virtually made the pressure on artists more universal and immediate. And for artists who are eager to find a balance between musical creation and personal privacy, or who have already achieved something, this endless stare is suffocating.

In the current environment where social attributes and artistic cores are greatly unbalanced, if record companies and musicians pursue fast food trends too much, they will always appear impetuous and inevitably fall into the dilemma of flow fetishism. Perhaps, with an inward mentality, some artists can be allowed to stay away from social media, focus on self-improvement, and maintain the purity of art.

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