Contrasting Participation Techniques – Missy Higgins and Taylor Swift
In the physical world, you can form networks in the social and professional scenes. These have now expanded into the digital world, in particular on the internet with sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn factiliating these relationships and connections. These are basic networking examples, however, the internet can be considered as a network in itself. The vital part of this network is participation, being a part of this online community involves adding and sharing your own knowledge or skills and by doing this you are expanding the current network. The music industry is a classic example of something that has changed dramatically due to the introduction of the internet. Competition has increased within the industry as more people can access more artists, and more artists have the ability to reach audiences that wouldn’t have been possible before. Contrasting two female singer/songwriters and their participation in the music industry networks both online and industrially will show two various marketing techniques and how they are each effective. Missy Higgins has a strong social media presence and Taylor Swift has focused on promoting her name and being connected to multiple products to connect and engage with her audience.
Most artists and bands now have very active social networking, as participating online in their network is a marketing technique that helps to connect them with fans. Social media has become a network within itself, your accounts can connect together all serving various functions. Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, SoundCloud and Vimeo are some social networking platforms that musicians use to strengthen their presence online. Taking Missy Higgins as an example of someone with strong social media, these images below show how she has expanded over these platforms. Click on the images below to view the pages.
It is a clever marketing strategy, and creates a strong brand. You can see a similar colour scheme and images coming through in each of the sites. This reaches niche markets and makes her music available for all to hear. Social media is a way to engage with fans and interact with them beyond the music and videos. This strong social media presence allows Missy Higgins to interact with her followers and keep them up to date with her music. It is a great way to start creating hype surrounding new albums.
Contrasting this strong social media presence to a more industrial presence, shows the different ways to get your music heard and the various styles of fans you can connect with. Taylor Swift, another prominent female artist has used very different strategies to promote her music and connect with her fan base. Her product endorsements have gotten her face known and her name out there. By releasing clothes and perfume, fans can now engage with Taylor Swift and embrace her image.
Bruno Mars suggested in an interview that having an industrial presence is not what it takes to be a successful musician, saying “it doesn’t take a fragrance, its not about the tabloids, it’s about you putting in the work,” however, Taylor Swift’s marketing strategy has undoubtedly worked, her fans want to see her succeed and apparently will do a lot to get her there (PressParty, 2014). Recently, Swift accidently released 8 seconds of static noise and fans paid $1.29 on iTunes to purchase it, sending the empty track to the top of the iTunes charts in Canada. Tyler Anderson, an opinion columnist, questions whether Swift’s “fans love Taylor Swift because they love her music, or do fans love Taylor Swift because they love Taylor Swift?” (Anderson, T, 2014). However, this is not to say that Taylor Swift does not participate in music industry networks online, her cover of Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’ appealed to her fans that appreciate her music and showed how she connects with other musicians. Therefore, as much as Taylor Swift’s marketing team might focus on her image rather than her music, she does continue to go back to the core of her music at times.
Musicians also have their own networks online and can communicate to one another and promote each other’s work. Covers are now encouraged and are a fantastic way of promoting other music they enjoy whilst showing off their own skills and commitment to the industry. Missy Higgins’ latest album, Oz, works completely off this concept, paying tribute to the Australian music scene; Oz consists of Missy Higgins’ covers of Australian musician’s songs. Australian radio station, Triple J has the show Like a Version where musicians perform a cover on air, which is also filmed and posted on Youtube. Due to Triple J’s following of 173,000 subscribers on YouTube the cover has the ability to reach a huge audience, especially when people can share, like and link to the videos with such ease that these connections create a network simply through one video. For example, San Cisco’s cover of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ has over 2,700,000 views. By Triple J publishing the link to the Youtube video via Facebook and Twitter all of these online accounts can be linked together. By displaying it on this medium, it encourages the participation of the audience as they can listen to it on the radio, then watch it on Youtube, share the video on Facebook, or retweet it and then express their opinions.
Youtube is an online community that functions completely on peer participation. Without people posting videos than the site would exist, it is an example of the ‘produser’ – where the users are also the producers of the material. As Adrian Miles describes “networked literacies are marked by your participation as a peer in these flows and networks – you contribute to them and in turn can share what others provide” (2007, pg 24-30). Youtube also promotes the concept of an active reader, as it involves participation in a different way to TV. It has electronic linking that has the ability move away from linearization, as electronic sources are “a medium that encourages readers to chose different paths rather than follow a linear one” (Landow, 2006, pg. 109). The reader is enabled to chose their own way of reading the text and this can be applied not only to being able to link to other pages in Wikipedia but also listening to music or watching videos. Returning to Youtube as an example, the side bar of suggestions to the right of the video encourages the viewer to listen to similar things and explore other artists or bands. In this way, it is a dense connector in the music network online.
By participating and having a presense on Youtube and other social networks, it is a way of marketing your music and accessing your audience. Using social media as a marketing technique opens up a two-way communication structure between artists, record labels and consumers. Salo, Lankinen and Mäntymäki, Finish Professors at the University of Oulu, have found the most common motives to use social media in the music industry are to have a sense of affinity with the artist, the reinforcement of social identity, participation in the form of user-generated content and two-way interaction. They also recognize that “access to content is an extremely important consumer motive for using social media in the music business” (Salo, Lankinen & Mäntymäki, 2013). Considering Missy Higgins’ social media network, her music is readily available. Soundcloud, Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook and Google+ all have the capability to share music or videos and the other accounts have links to these, allowing people to access her music from many different platforms. Taylor Swift’s focus on her image gets her name out there, however, wearing her perfume does not give you access to her music. Swift also uses social media to her advantage and her fans can access her music easily online, however, her other more prominent promotional techniques with various products, such as a shoe line or being in TV advertisments for Coca Cola, take away the focus from her music career.
In this one industry, being network literate is extremely important. As a future media maker, it is good to keep this in mind and understand how the networks functions and how to participate in them in the long run. Wanting to work in the music industry, the marketing of musicians and their music is vital to making money and selling albums, so having this literacy will be beneficial when it comes to being successful in the industry. These networks increase our capacity as media makers and give us wider opportunities than we can even imagine and this will only grow, as we become more network literate.
The development of the internet and online networking has effected the music industry greatly. Marketing music and marketing the musicians themselves become quite separate things, social media allows the audience to connect with the musicians and have faster and easier access to their music. Peer participation in the music industry networks are vital as artists can share their music, videos and opinions online and connect with others doing the same thing. This also helps them to gather a following and keep them engaged with what they are doing with their music and career.
Bibliography
Anderson, T 2014, ‘Opinion: Taylor Swift’s fandom more a product of her lifestyle, not music’, The Lantern, viewed 24 October 2014, http://thelantern.com/2014/10/opinion-taylor-swifts-fandom-more-a-product-of-her-lifestyle-not-music/
2014, ‘Bruno Mars On Success’, PressParty, viewed 24 October 2014, http://www.pressparty.com/pg/newsdesk/brunomars/view/104067/
Landow, G 2006, “Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization”, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print.
Miles, A 2007, “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge”, Screen Education Autumn.45.
Salo, J, Lankinen, M & Mäntymäki M 2013, “The Use of Social Media for Artist Marketing: Music Industry Perspectives and Consumer Motivations”, International Journal on Media Management, vol. 15, no. 1