Whether it’s local music or national music, seems like all bands and artists have joined the social media bandwagon. All musicians & bands seem to have their own official website, blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. In the past, myspace used to be a big hit with music, but people are no longer interested in myspace anymore. These days it’s all blogs, twitter, and facebook when bands are promoting themselves.

What is it about everyone joining the social media bandwagon?

Not only that it’s an easy way to promote yourself like your gigs, project announcements, etc. Bands & artists see it as an opportunity to interact with their fans in a more personal way. Bands have been chatting back and forth with their fans in social media pages lately.

Back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and even the 80’s, when there was no internet around, it made music promoting a lot harder. Back in those days, you had to use flyers to hang in town and mailing lists by regular mail if you wanted to promote your music. Newspapers and magazines were also used to  promote music in those days. Today, it seems that music promoting is much easier.

I’m not trying to sound negative, but I’m going to be honest here. I think the internet pretty much killed the music business. Nobody is buying records anymore because of it. Everyone is doing everything online these days.

It seems that more bands are getting record deals because of the internet but is that a good thing? No, not really. I miss the old days of music when the A&R guy used to go to a band show and just sign a band to a major label because he/she likes their music, that’s how it used to be done in the old days, but it’s not like that anymore. These days labels sign bands based on their popularity alone, not caring if their music is good or not.

I miss the old school ways of promoting music and wish it was still like that. I know I’m sounding like a hypocrite, that I do this social media thing myself, but I do it because everyone else is doing it. I’ll never forget the quote from John Mellencamp, “I think the internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb.”, or something like that.

It’s easier for bands online to make themselves look popular when in reality, a lot of them are nothing. Bands have been releasing free music to the internet like what Radiohead have been doing as of late and a lot of bands have been making their own youtube videoblogs.

Self publicity is great, don’t get me wrong, but I believe the internet has taken the love of music away from bands & musicians itself. Social media has certainly changed the way we all look at music, but honestly, it didn’t help, it only makes the music business much much worse.

Kev