The Social Media Musician
This is the Age of the Social Media Musician, for better and/or worse.
I’m perfectly OK with social media as a 'content discovery' tool. I’ve discovered a raft of great guitarists through my social media feeds. To the extent that my feed is now largely composed of musical content.
And to alt-tab straight to the conclusion: I’m happy that social media has become a viable ‘stage’ for performance and engagement. A legitimate channel / platform / space for the distribution and consumption of music, in addition to the regular performance channels.
There’s good and bad in this, of course.
Obvious Point: Socials are a necessary facet of self-promotion, profile and brand building. Because socials are 100% marketing — that is, advertising tools.
OP: Covid forced a lot of musicians to go social. And in an increasingly precarious live music scene, socials became an essential way to align & connect multiple income streams, to keep the small change coming in.
OP: Socials make content creators of musicians. On top of all the talent-chops-skills, musicians need to edit, colour grade and distribute video. With a sub-OP here: that musicians who present well on video, who seem video-native, will do better. This also means musicians fret about growth metrics, creating and posting content in line with algorithmic demands, and posting all the time. What will it be this week? Can I take time off, schedule some posts, respond to comments, test some new thumbnails? Will my numbers go up? Will they tweak the algorithm again? Will I ever go viral? Once the ball’s rolling, the demands of social are relentless (at a certain level, of course: ie if you depend on it).
OP: you have to be on all the socials, including TikTok, and understand what drives and differentiates your audience on each. If there’s a new wack channel on the scene, you have to be there too.
OP: If you’re popular because of your musicianship, you have to maintain and exceed that level all the time. Which behind the scenes means you’re re-shooting take after take to get the best performance on camera. You don’t want mistakes, flubs and imperfect content to attract comments and memes. You must perform. This has some interesting fall-out for musicians who play on the virtuoso spectrum, which I’ll get to.
OP: It’s worth all the anxiety and bother (right?) because you can connect straight to fans. Hype them up for a new release, point to new content, offer promos and special access or whatever tickles them. This informs your brand and your value-perception. Plus, you have to deal with all the snark, negative comments and dreck that gets thrown about online. You don’t want to go off-topic or get political because then there’s even more hate. Sub-OP: haters be part of the picture now.
OP: the opportunities for diverse and interesting content are limitless. Educational stuff, behind the scenes, deep dives, how-tos, gear talk, life talk. You can make it all work. You can distribute quality [if you can afford the production values].
But it’s as a discovery tool that socials work best.
I wouldn’t have found the warped, quilted genius of Mono Neon.
The dinky perfect guitar lessons of Eric Haugen on YouTube.
Chris Buck and his blazing solos.
The chill Shingo Sekiguchi.
The sheer nerdery and shwang of That Pedal Show.
The mighty Uncle Larry.
The grumbling moustache, Venus Theory.
Country gentleman, Joel Paterson.
Relentless Louis Cole.
I could go on but this isn’t a promotional piece per se (OP: well maybe it is. If you’re using one channel to cross-promote another, then you’re a digital fucking village, what). But like I said, I’m perfectly happy to consume music-content through socials (especially if it leads to their Bandcamp page).
Social media** is a legitimate stage, a performance-space in itself. Yeah the screen real estate is shit, and the sound only as good as your headphones and the musician’s recording gear. But for all intents: This is a Legitimate Way to Consume and Appreciate Music and for Musicians to Thrive [a Little].
And for all other intents, that’s a little bit sad too — because it’s necessary now, pretty much the only significant way to get noticed and get traction; and because it’s all content content content down to the lowest common denominator on the Web; and these values run counter to the magic and value of music, somewhat. Time spent scripting and editing video is not spent producing music.
Selecting for virtuosity
But there’s more. From what I’ve noticed with YouTube guitarists (who loooove to solo), and selecting for big-ass chops by the channel-audience relationship, there’s a tendency to favour virtuoso style musicianship. The old ‘If you think that guy was good...’ logic from music stores of yore. The fastest, bestest, most-skills-per-solo dudes [and yes, mostly dudes]. But specifically that vertical quality of chops up the wazoo, executed more to impress other guitarists than to express something meaningful.
[If I had to diagnose a cause, I’d say there’s a complexity bias in music/musicianship which equates difficult with better, at the expense of simplicity, space, general grace and groove.]
Which for any performer creates a degree of insecurity, a false picture of what it takes to make it with the algorithm or a social audience. Virtuoso or nothing. Good enough to be on a top 5 list. No sloppy performances, no mistakes. To be a real player you must be this tall.
Beginners will feel hopeless learning to unpack a solo and faced with all the attitude and seeming-superiority of manque-virtuoso heroes. Seasoned musos know there’s always someone better, but they’d also be miffed at what makes it.
It’s a small point, obvs, which applies to guitarists especially.
But the algorithm doesn’t select for musical modesty, sufficiency, or even good rhythm feel. Or other, non-linear approaches to musicianship and composition. Or space and silence.
So remember that everything on socials is driven by metrics of engagement, not metrics of value.
With digital technologies, all modes of creating and composing music are legitimate; there is no one right or best way to do anything.
And so while social media virtuosi are fun and fabulous, don’t let them distract you from the oblique creators who make new and interesting music without the need for chops and bravado. Like the Steve Malkmuses of the world.
Just creating is of the essence. Even if it never hits the socials.
** and I mean YouTube, primarily.