Importance of Social Media for Musicians

Social media is one of the most important aspects of an artist’s career. A musician’s social media presence has the potential to make or break their career and allows for opportunity to form a real connection with fans and other musicians.?

I feel it is important, now more than ever, to keep up with social media as an artist. This doesn’t necessarily mean using every platform, but paying attention to which platforms would be beneficial to your career as a musician. Keeping up with trends could help with gaining exposure. If an artist uses popular TikTok sounds or follows any trend on the app, that could put them on any user’s ‘for you page’ and serve as free promotion for themselves. Focusing on the algorithm and posting videos that potential listeners would like will help to get on the ‘for you page’ of the right audience. Using different social media platforms could help with expanding your audience and forming connections with current or potential fans. This is important to know not only for different platforms, but for understanding different opportunities on each website or app. For example, Instagram offers Reels, stories, feed posts, and IGTV. These are various ways an artist could promote themselves and their music using just one platform.?

Some examples of artists who are taking advantage of the opportunities that come from using social media are:

Charlie Puth - he is continuously active on TikTok. Between posting duets to other people’s videos and posting his own videos that encourage interaction from other users, his videos are all over everyone’s ‘for you page’

Here is an example of a video posted by Charlie Puth that led to other users promoting his videos and himself as an artist:

John Mayer - while he does have some funny/random content on his account, a lot of his videos are him talking about his music or explaining how to play guitar parts in his songs. He also duets other user’s videos which shows fan engagement.

Here is an example of an interactive video from John Mayer:

Jenna Vitale is a junior at William Paterson University. Her major is Music and Entertainment Industries with minors in Business Administration and Public Relations.