My Music, My Way

The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today
Samantha Juneman

BY SAMANTHA MAY JUNEMAN Professor Keith Hatschek - November 4th, 2010 MMGT 111

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

In the 1950s, media was all about conformity. A readjusting society, coming out of wartime, sought for comforts of the home, and normalcy within their old and familiar social structures. In that respect, music was being marketing to the masses as one whole. Our societys music preferences were treated as one ideal notion, and consumers were told what to think, and what to like by the media. The current market could not function further from the means of the mass media approach. The music industry is now focused on the consumer as an individual, and is focusing on catering to that individuals personal wants and needs. Social media, which has risen to the forefront of the Internet industry in the last ten years, has taken over the music industrys use for mass media. It has become a tool that has given musicians the ability to cater to their fans on a personal level. The rise of social media in the last ten years has contributed to the integration of music and social networking in on a commercial and social level. Currently, the music industry uses social media to reach consumers who are part of market segments which were previously hard to reach. Through this realization of the effectiveness of catering to new consumers on a more personal and individual level, the industry has changed its perspective on many of its marketing strategies. The industry no longer markets to its consumers in the same manner as it has for the last fifty years beforehand. The rise of social media has

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

caused the music industry to shift its focus from a mass marketing approach to that of targeting the individual.

As a new and rapidly changing science, social media is hard to define. However, Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haelein, who are avid researchers of social media, describe it as a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user generated content.i In the case of online music, user generated content relates to the marketing of digital media with blogs, posts, tweets, and anything related to the creation of buzz about music content. Major labels in the music industry have established grass roots marketing divisions to handle and utilize this user-generated online content relating to their assets.ii NetReach is a small division within Universal Music Group Distribution, which is designed to bolster product and artist awareness through the creation, promotion and management of online fan groups and communities iii. CEO, Jim Urie, states by extending our efforts to include online marketing, UMGD is better positioned to capitalize on the marketing opportunities that exist across all areas in a more strategic and integrated way.iv This strategic marketing stance taken by an industry leader reiterates the importance of reaching a new market segment online, and

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

acknowledges the impact that user generated content has on digital music sales. Social media is defined by the way users operate within these applications, and the individual user is what matters here, not the general public.

Why is social media focused on a different subject than mass media?

To begin to understand the psychology behind social media, we must first understand the strong tie that it shares with the concept of sub culture. Music marketing within social media strives to offer a wide variety of music to a single consumer at one time. The selectivity of the consumer is heavily influenced by the sub cultural nature of musical preference and the tie that musical inclination has to the concept of social standing. As personal taste in music has become much more important to ones own representation, the beginnings of this trend can be traced to the start of sub cultural growth in popular music around the late 1970s through the 1980s with the Club Culture. Ideas of authenticity and hipness, or lack thereof, were becoming prevalent in the social scene of music.v Club culture was growing around disco hits mixed especially for club play and an

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

underground music movement dependant on rotation within these venues. Soon, In the United states, where the success of disco depended, at least at first, on deejay creativity, the music developed as a singles medium.vi The resurgence of the single meant that the album was no longer the dominant medium. Styles and selections of the deejay were now dependant of the individual creative identity of each single. This new selectivity was fueling the personal tastes of club goers in sprouting subcultures. The Club culture was the beginning of a new movement where music was stimulating a social culture in the late 20th century. Musicologist, Sarah Thornton points out Club crowds generally congregate(d) on the basis of their shared taste in music, their consumption of common media and, most importantly, their preference for people with similar tastes to themselves.vii Music consumers began to tie their music preferences to their own social standing. Ironically, the concept of hipness and authenticity in musical preference to the masses was not a valuable aspect in musical subculture. The more something was hip to a larger amount of people, the less hip it actually became. Anti mass culture was becoming associated with the idea of higher value in music to those in the club culture. Approving reports in mass media like tabloids or television are the subcultural kiss of death.viii Having a mass appeal to a song showed lack of personal taste and uniqueness, this was

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

exactly the opposite of what the club culture was valuing in musical taste. It was the peoples ability to have control and preference in the music they surrounded themselves with and chose to identify with in its subcultural social circles. Similarly social media today provides this artistic selectivity to anyone with Internet access, not just avid club goers. It fuels the common day consumers desires to identify with a subculture and is able to provide those consumers with convenient access to anti mass media. The Club Culture is an example of a growing need for mediums of socialization within music, which fueled the necessity of a medium to be created and available to everyone. In this way, music inspired the basis of need for social media; to conveniently find a community with similar interests and characteristics. Now, music exists at the core of social networking, and inspires many business functions in the industry of the Internet.

Who are the people using it?

In 2009, author Eamonn Forde suggested Digital music is firmly ingrained in consumption habits among teenage and pre-college consumers in the US.ix With an audience survey performed by the NPD group, Fordes study shows that music is an integral part of social networking activity and occupies a large amount of time within the teenage and pre-college demographic. A majority of the activity from

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

this age bracket involved with digital music is focused on the discovery and consumption of new musical artists and content. This shift in consumer behavior is revealed in the rise of recommendation sites such as Last.Fm, and Pandora.x Also reported was the fact that almost a fifth of Social Networking consumers listen to music via Social Networking sites, and in spite of this, legal downloading is increasing on the web. This study shows the consumers response to the growth of the Internet and new technology. It also reveals the perspective in which the music industry sees new potential for online sales. With a growing market of youth, who are willing to purchase content legally, and are dependant on convenient consumption and social musical association, social networking is the obvious platform of use to reach the Industrys target of consumers.xi

How much do they use it, and how important is it to the users?

Music is an integral part in the usage of social media among our youth culture, but how much is social media involved in our lives, and how? The Pew Internet and American Life Project did a study on the content, and platform use of social networking, finding just how much of our lives are involved with social networking. 93% of teenagers use the Internetand 64% of online teens have participated in a wide range of content-creating activities on the Internet.xii Teens are very

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

involved with content creation, sharing, and remixing online, whether or not that content be audio or visual. You can see in the table below a significant increase in the percentage of teens using multiple platforms to create content online from 2004 to 2006.

xiii

The article does not mention music content specifically, but it

My Music, My Way: The Effects of the Rise of Social Media on the Music Industry Today

does specify which platforms teens use the most to create content online. The study goes on to show that Social Networking applications and websites such as Facebook and Myspace integrate many of these content-creating behaviors and the opportunity to display content created elsewhere into one centralized location.xiv Again, the importance of convenience is brought up as an integral part as to why consumers choose one platform over the other. The music industry both acknowledges the significance of online content creation, and the users who are creating it. They target users of these websites who create the most content online.

Do the marketing strategies affect these users? Is the music industry targeting these users specifically?
With the majority of content creators online being teenagers, it poses the question if these are the main consumers of digital music, and does the music industry target this demographic specifically? Online music retailers actually target individuals within the age bracket of 25-45 years old.xv According to researcher Maria Styven, these individuals have a higher-than-average interest in music, low concerns about risk, and are experienced users of the Internet and digital music overall.xvi This demographic is categorized as a group of busier internet users who may be using social networking for

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professional use, and may not spend as much time online as a teenager. With these characteristics in mind, convenience and visual appeal are important in the strategies accompanying the marketing process for digital music. It is important to quickly establish appeal in a consumers eye, but it is also important to offer then an easy and fast purchasing process. This strategy proves to be integral in keeping users engaged. Along with making things easy and convenient for customers through platform efficiency, they also need to be offered a choice of quality and incentive to want to purchase quality digital content as opposed to downloading it illegally. Maria Styven states that Customer-perceived value of downloadable music, in terms of expected value for money, was found to be quite low. Value could, however, be increased by improving the most important benefits.xvii Convenience benefits are important because online consumers generally hold online content at an extremely low value and compare it to free, but illegal, content they could be getting instead. The key to getting consumers to spend their money on music is to offer a convenient, easy, and visually appealing platform in which to purchase it from.

How is the music industry taking advantage of social media?

The Industry holds great importance to the platform interface of

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their online markets. A new social media site that incorporates attributes like ease of use, convenience, and visual appeal, is RootMusic. The creation of RootMusic, a website devoted to retailing and marketing music online within the convenience of Facebook, gives specific examples as to how it competes with other music marketing tools online in both convenience, and simplicity. The new platform is described, by Music Week writer, Eamonn Forde, as much cleaner than its main competitor, Myspace.xviii Hayes Metzger, the product manager, mentions that the main goal behind RootMusic was to replace the physical idea of a street team, and use those resources to reach more potential customers on a wider geographic level.xix RootMusic is reaching out to fans and customers on an individual basis by providing simple and convenient platforms of information that cater to all of the specific personal tastes. The creators of RootMusic designed this platform by looking at already established examples, realizing their market segment on an individual basis, and focusing on catering to personal tastes and convenience, which their competitors had not been keeping in mind. Taking the example of an aesthetically pleasing layout from Myspace, and integrating it in to Facebook with a cleaner music player and added features for sharing, RootMusic has essentially tried to combine the best of both social networking sites, and offer convenience and aesthetic changes to music consumers to keep them engaged with music. This creation inspires online content to

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be created concerning online music. It targets the user demographics of Facebook, and offers its users the freedom of variety of choice, and is simple and easy to use. Industry leaders are taking many other actions like RootMusic, and moving towards offering their consumers more choices and marketing to them as individuals.xx

Why Focus on the individual?

The movement towards marketing music through social media has gravitated towards focusing on the individual rather than the masses. When marketing music, or any other content online, a firm will find one person is viewing their product at a time using his or her own personal computers. Consumers are coming into contact with content on their own personal time, through their own mediums, and without the reactions or commentary of others around them. Their personal impressions of online content are completely original and uninfluenced by the people around them at first glance. This privacy that exists in the relationship between product and the online consumer is what the music industry has noticed and is focusing on.

Why is Mass Media no longer the only method of marketing music?

In some ways, the methods of mass media are still effective, but

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currently only successful with the older generations of consumers. Social media has replaced what mass media used to be for our youth culture. Teenagers and young adults grew up with new technology and depend on their social networking sites; they want to display their created content and music preferences within its media. In analyzing the decline of mass media, Aaron Cohen states, the introduction of digital technology has created the most creative generation that has ever lived.xxi This generation has grown up with technology framing their lives, and in many cases, still strive to remain a vital story line in the content.xxii Cohen goes on to explain that the Internet gives us that opportunity to feel included and connected; Everybody wants an audience, and on the Internet an audience of only one person is still an audience.xxiii Mass media has begun to decline as the most effective method of marketing music because of the vast amount of online content available to everyone. With an endless amount of different media influencing consumers online, the music industry is loosing leverage with the mass marketing approach. This trend is causing the music industry to struggle with creating hit makers.xxiv However, social media is not killing the music marketers job, it is offering marketing tools like international distribution, fan communication, and content creation to help them market music in a different manner. Music marketers must realize that they are catering towards a generation who is a lot more involved with music than just listening to

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it.

How will the Music Industry change?

Social media is sometimes viewed as an obstacle to the music industry. Newer industry leaders see the contrary and embrace the opportunities that social networking have to offer. The music industry needs to change its methods and realize the current market they are catering to; shrinking artist rosters and shooting million-dollar videos is not the correct strategy.xxv Aaron Cohen suggests, Labels should consider organizing the participant generation. Alternative approaches that allow bands to their way onto the Internet may lead to a whole new meaning of A&R.xxvi It is safe to say that the Music Industry has noticed the shift in success from mass media approaches to those that encompass social media and its new generation. However this is not to say that the music industry has abandoned the mass media approach all together.

Is mass media completely irrelevant now?

Mass media still exists today and is a large function of marketing and media in our current society. Its decline has obviously taken a large structural toll on the music marketing industry, but has not abandoned it. One example of the success of mass media today would be the show American Idol. This television series offers one large

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encompassing audience the availability of popular music via public television. It employs the mass marketing strategies similar to that of American Band Stand. American Idol is one of the largest examples of mass media still existing today. However, it is a perfect example of the integration between mass media and social networking. Each individual contestant of American Idol must receive votes from their fans to stay in the competition. This employs the use of online campaigns for the artists done by themselves and family and friends. At this point, a label or company does not support these artists, and marketing efforts are done on their own terms. The industry can use this as an example of the effectiveness of grass roots marketing done online. Ultimately, the winner is chosen by the personal tastes of the audience; this includes both the purposes behind social media and mass media together. In this way, mass media and social work beautifully together in terms of marketing media. They both further the aims of each other, and one can argue that they cannot exist without the other. However, mass media has now been forced to share the limelight of success with social media. Mass marketing can no longer be considered the only successful means of marketing in the music industry.

Where is social media now?

Social media has been rising to the forefront of media for the last

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ten years, and continues to work its magic on the marketing world. The online industry, regarding much more than just music, is growing monetarily and with continually added influential power. The future of social media will not negate the theories and practices of mass media all together, because in the end, marketing efforts are about getting the attention of the most amount of people with the most amount of money. However, its successful methods of reaching a new culture that prides its self in individuality and personal identity prove to be helpful. Social media will continue to serve this purpose to our society and will more than likely move even closer towards the benefits of enticing aesthetics and convenience. Catering to the individual is what social media is focused on, and the music industry has followed suit.

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. Kaplan, Andreas M; Michael Haelein, Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, (Business Horizons, Indiana University, 2010), 53.
i

. Universal Music Group Distribution, Universal Music and Video Distribution Establishes NetReach, A New Media Division Dedicated to Online Grassroots Marketing, (Corporate History, Santa Monica, CA, 2002), http://www.universalmusic.com/corporate/news35105
ii

. Universal Music Group Distribution, Universal Music and Video Distribution Establishes NetReach, A New Media Division Dedicated to Online Grassroots Marketing, (Corporate History, Santa Monica, CA, 2002), http://www.universalmusic.com/corporate/news35105
iii

. Universal Music Group Distribution, Universal Music and Video Distribution Establishes NetReach, A New Media Division Dedicated to Online Grassroots Marketing, (Corporate History, Santa Monica, CA, 2002), http://www.universalmusic.com/corporate/news35105
iv

. Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Sub Culture Capital, (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1996), 3
v

. Reebee Garafalo, Rockin Out; Popular Music in the U.S.A., (University of Massachusetts, Boston, 2010) 286.
vi

. Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Sub Culture Capital, (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1996), 4
vii

. Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Sub Culture Capital, (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1996), 6
viii

. Eamonn Forde, Digital: Music at the Core of Social Networking, Survey Reveals, Music Week, (28 March 2009) 9.
ix

. Eamonn Forde, Digital: Music at the Core of Social Networking, Survey Reveals, Music Week, (28 March 2009) 9.
x

Eamonn Forde, Digital: Music at the Core of Social Networking, Survey Reveals, Music Week, (28 March 2009) 9.
xi

. Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, Aaron Smith, Teens and Social Music, (PEW Internet and American Life Project, Washington DC, 2007) 2
xii

Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, Aaron Smith, Teens and Social Music, (PEW Internet and American Life Project, Washington DC, 2007) 12
xiii

. Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, Aaron Smith, Teens and Social Music, (PEW Internet and American Life Project, Washington DC, 2007) 11
xiv

. Maria Styven, Exploring the Online Music Market: Consumer Characteristics and Value Perceptions, (Lulea University of Technology, 2007) 25
xv

. Maria Styven, Exploring the Online Music Market: Consumer Characteristics and Value Perceptions, (Lulea University of Technology, 2007) 6
xvi

. Maria Styven, Exploring the Online Music Market: Consumer Characteristics and Value Perceptions, (Lulea University of Technology, 2007) 6
xvii

. Eamonn Forde, Social Networking: Is RootMusic a Myspace Killer? , Music Week (10 July 2010) 9.
xviii

. Eamonn Forde, Social Networking: Is RootMusic a Myspace Killer? , Music Week (10 July 2010) 9.
xix

Eamonn Forde, Social Networking: Is RootMusic a Myspace Killer? , Music Week (10 July 2010) 9.
xx

. Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8.
xxi

Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8.
xxii

. Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8.
xxiii

. Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8.
xxiv

. Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8.
xxv

. Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8.
xxvi

Bibliography 1. Aaron Cohen, Pete Seeger, Social Networking and the Decline of Mass Media, Billboard, 118:22 (3 June 2006) 8. 2. Andreas M Kaplan; Michael Haelein, Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, (Business Horizons, Indiana University, 2010),

53. 3. Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, Aaron Smith, Teens and Social Music, (PEW Internet and American Life Project, Washington DC, 2007) 2-12 4. Eamonn Forde, Digital: Music at the Core of Social Networking, Survey Reveals, Music Week, (28 March 2009) 9. 5. Eamonn Forde, Social Networking: Is RootMusic a Myspace Killer? , Music Week (10 July 2010) 9. 6. Maria Styven, Exploring the Online Music Market: Consumer Characteristics and Value Perceptions, (Lulea University of Technology, 2007) 6-25 7. Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Sub Culture Capital, (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1996), 4-6 8. Reebee Garafalo, Rockin Out; Popular Music in the U.S.A., (University of Massachusetts, Boston, 2010) 286. 9. Universal Music Group Distribution, Universal Music and Video Distribution Establishes NetReach, A New Media Division Dedicated to Online Grassroots Marketing, (Corporate History, Santa Monica, CA, 2002), http://www.universalmusic.com/corporate/news35105