Introduction
Social media with a strong influence on various segments of the population have become an integral part of modern culture. For this reason, the development of any brand, including novice music performers, significantly depends on its success in media. Despite the broad reach and outstanding impact, social networks may not fulfil expectations placed on them as there are many difficulties with which a novice artist can face.
Problem Analysis
Music is usually an emotional personal work, and creative personalities may consider strategies for gaining popularity like a forced burden. This issue may be solved by artist management bureau hired by an artist. However, they now face particular difficulties, recording industry undergoes through a crisis due to new technologies, but they create opportunities for new marketing methods to promote musicians (Haynes & Marshall, 2018). The client – artist management bureau Shark Vision striving to follow trends wanted to create a strategy for promoting new brands in social media, but their efforts failed. After describing the history of the problem, bureau representatives noted that they created attractive content and paid for advertising, but the pages were not popular enough. In this regard, the question was formulated: what are the difficulties in promoting new artists in social media and how do cope with them?
New trends in the music industry are associated with the macro environment – broadcasting media has changed significantly, and new segments of society have gained influence. The success of musicians who without hitting the charts and having reached a certain sales mark would disappear a few decades ago, can now be withheld using streaming and social media (Aziz, 2019). Moreover, it can be argued that previously the culture was dictated by artists, and social movements, and the mediator for them was radio, newspapers and television. At the moment, thanks to social media, intermediaries are not needed – the phenomenon of crowdculture has arisen, when average people have more influence (Holt, 2016). Traditional marketing strategies do not work to reach this audience.
Marketers hoped to reach the largest number of audiences thanks to social media. However, users use networks to communicate, strive to limit their content and trust the similar consumers as they are (Chaffey, 2020a). Social Media appeared in the early 2000s, but a special increase is noted after 2012 (Figure 1). The amount of content appearing in them is constantly growing (Figure 2). For these reasons, the study and creation of new strategies for promoting brands on social networks, although at an initial stage, is extremely necessary.
Objectives
Based on the analysis of the problem, researcher’s and stakeholders’ objectives can be determined:
- The paper’s objective is to provide a research proposal based on the problem encountered by the researcher’s client and demonstrate the relevance of the problem to the entire field of the music industry.
- The client’s goal is to find out what difficulties marketers face when gaining the popularity for the new artists’ pages in social media and get advice on overcoming them.
- The objective of the research is to find out what obstacles can arise during the promotion of new performers in the social media and what strategies are applicable to overcome them.
The study has practical significance as it will collect the best knowledge necessary to overcome the difficulties in promoting beginner-artists on social networks. To achieve such a result, it is necessary to examine some aspects of the problem. Studying these aspects will not only help achieve the objectives of the study, but also fill in the gaps in knowledge about the promotion of musicians on social networks. At the moment, this topic is not enough highlighted as research, but is mainly represented in the forms of guides and advice from various experts. The aspects for investigation are next:
- ways to engage and promote brands in social media;
- how to apply brand promotion strategies on the media taking into account the specifics of the music industry;
- potential reasons for the failure of advertising companies on social networks;
- aspects that cause users to delay their attention on certain content;
- how music performers are represented in social media and which of them are most successful.
Theoretical Exploration
Previously, advertising of musicians and their work was available only to those who managed to get the favor of a famous label. However, technology and social media have made significant changes. Moreover, according to Aziz (2019), music labels will become obsolete and disappear in the next few years. Now artists of different style, level, and popularity should win one audience on almost equal terms. Marketers are only learning to work in this area, since they did not expect that it would be so difficult to reach their consumers on social networks.
As soon as social media marketers appeared, they saw new advertising opportunities. The concept of social media includes Internet channels that allow users to communicate, exchange information and ideas through the creation of online communities and networks. Thus, social media marketing (SMM) uses these channels to draw audience attention to advertised products or services (Henderson, 2020). However, the features of using these media can be a barrier to the promotion of any brand.
Content creators have very little time to draw users’ attention to their information. At the same time, the first thing to pay attention to is the visual representation, and then the text and other aspects (Russmann & Svensson, 2017). For this reason, the first difficulty faced by brands is the creation of author’s visual content. Moreover, novice musicians focused on their product can easily miss the meaning of the picture. It is important to devote time and effort to this aspect, perhaps using the services of a designer who understands the process of attracting attention.
Another problem the musician may encounter is poor reviews. Moreover, the concept of firestorm is used in modern terminology – when a brand faces a lot of bad comments at the same time and condemnation from the Internet community (Hansen, Kupfer, & Hennig-Thurau, 2018). However, since this study considers novice musicians, they are unlikely to cause such a stir. On a smaller scale, with negative reviews, it is also worth acting carefully – personal communication with the listener may be required if the criticism was justified. The main thing in such cases, not to participate in the dispute, ruining the musicians’ image, but to attract more positive reviews with good product and content.
Ignoring the SMM strategies is also a mistake for musicians. The influence of social media is growing and marketers need to develop methods for attracting users (Vinerean, 2017). For example, such a basic concept as an audience can sometimes become a problem. The correct definition of the audience affects the choice of the main network for promotion, and it may also become possible to choose an influencer – the leader of opinions, which affects users (Arora, etc., 2019). Thus, novice musicians should not only create good music, but also use channels for promotion, in particular – social media.
Provisional Research Questions
Central question: How to effectively promote new musicians in social media?
This question will be answered by examining the previously mentioned in the Objectives section aspects of the problem and by answering the sub-questions:
- What are the main obstacles in SMM?
- What are the promotion strategies in SMM?
- What are the features of the musicians’ promotion?
- What means are needed to promote musicians?
Conclusion
Thus, social media has the strong influence in the modern world and for this reason it is important for novice musicians not only to create quality music, but to use SMM to become more popular. Due to the peculiarities of social media – their focus on personal communication, the importance of visual content and other aspects, difficulties can arise. This newspaper describes several of them, but the topic can be developed into an extensive research. Studying issues related to the popularity of musicians in social networks will fill the gaps in knowledge and can be practically applied in musical industry.
References
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