Social Networks in the Music Industry

Anyone with a keen interest in music can produce their own these days. Whether you have a basic sense of rhythm or not, you too can reel out bars of endless noise and/or melody with music apps like Adobe Audition, Garageband, Cakewalk Pro Audio and others.

Platforms such as myspace and soundcloud provide budding musicians with opportunities to showcase their work, both of covers and original pieces. Now put yourself in the shoes of a talent scout for a major media label. Sifting through all the content in cyberspace presents a challenge in finding the right talent to promote. This is often hindered by the fact that musicians and fans are networked heavily amongst each other so popularity is not necessarily a safe factor to go by.

This article http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/do-social-networks-really-help-musicians.html discusses the implications of this conundrum and describes what one particular media label (A&R) is doing to find and promote talent efficiently. It provides some very useful insights for musicians to take into account when networking to bring exposure to their work.

Although the article is an interesting exercise in the use of social networks, it does not tackle the reality of music publishing where central labels are increasingly being done away with. Musicians are increasingly establishing themselves on an independent level directly with their fan base. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the individual Joe/Josephine in the street to still find new music that they can connect to. For an outline of the way music distribution is developing see this previous blog entry here http://crtunnard.blogspot.de/2012/12/how-social-media-has-revolutionized.html.

Mal