Look, can’t you see? Music and Social Media just DON’T WORK!


Look, can’t you see? Music and Social Media just DON’T WORK!


Three years ago, I wrote a Master’s dissertation on Social Media and Music Marketing; this discussed how independent musicians promoted themselves through social media.

I truly believed (and still do) that musicians have a strong presence and advantage in social networks and it is a platform that works wonders for musicians and fans to connect and share. I provided examples of fans interacting with Jon Amor’s Facebook posts on a personal level; how Pete Wearn (my brother dearest) uses Last.fm to get his music out there. And still today, there is something special about following an artist you like on the networks as it brings a sense of immediacy and realism to the whole fandom.


It may come as a surprise to you that I feel Twitter have made a bit of a boo boo this week by launching their #music application.

#music compiles playlists for you based on who you are following on Twitter and new artists that match those genres. I will probably have suggestions of Pop (Lady Gaga), Hip hop (Will.I.Am) country (Drive-By Truckers), Rock (Ronnie Wood) and probably some PJ & Duncan seeing as I was involved in the recent nostalgic reminiscing of the 90s following their leap to number 1.

The thing is, we love to follow our favourite artists to get a glimpse into their worlds, while excitedly clicking on their new videos, tours and hashtags, we do NOT like to be told what to listen to in the first place.

First of all, let’s look at Ping. Apple’s failure of a music social network which did exactly what Twitter’s #music is aspiring to do; recommend music based on your iTunes choices. I believe this failure came from that my iTunes is a very personal space for me. There are nearly twenty years of nights out, PMS, break-ups, road trips and workouts invested in that account – I’m not going to just  start being told who to listen to by Apple because the artist happens to have clicked the same genre when uploading.

Then you look at a more successful music sharing service – Spotify. The thing about Spotify that differs from Twitter’s #music is that (and the Big Cheeses in The Cloud will curse me for this) the primary aim of Spotify is to compile your own personal playlists to share.. Spotify The Company does not tell me who to put on my playlist; instead I spend minutes/hours lovingly searching through genres, artists and songs myself to find my perfect collection of songs.

So where does this leave Twitter #music? Not in great company if I’m honest – my first glimpse at it I’m not impressed. Out of the 136 songs recommended to me to play, I’m seeing about 15 I’d actually listen to - because I already have them on my iTunes. 


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