The Live Music Scene through Social Marketing

Adele and Justin Bieber are known for creating a music career from posting themselves online. Unlike the days when you had to pullover and find a payphone while driving, now with a simple post on YouTube a band can reach millions assuming they have talent or something unique to offer.  Social Media is a powerful tool in this way. It all starts with a song and these two artist are perfect examples of success through social media marketing. Now selling millions of records, this is one of the many phenomenal success stories in the business. So how does the digital age of music compare to the past?

Music Punk Live Music Scene

Before we carried our music around in our pocket or could press a button on a computer to get access to a digital recording of our favorite artist, we relied on the radio. If we liked what was playing at the time and our friends agreed then you basically found your way to the record store. A large percentage of the artists you supported may have never had a live performance or perhaps you didn't know or care. Some bands were savvy enough to know that fewer concerts still equaled millions of record sales. Those days are seemily long past. Now recorded music is as easy to purchase or share as anything. This has posed a problem for the future of musicians making a living in the live music industry. The good news is a musician no longer needs a record label to gain exposure.

More artist are sharing the limelight and that’s great. There are many ways of marketing your digital wares but the live music scene has become synonymous with marketing your music. If you want to make a living when your digital record sales are not cutting it, go on tour. Even if you are a musician only playing the local live music scene it would benefit you to check out a few useful tools in the form of mobile apps.  

Music Punk App

Bands in Town lets bands manage their tour dates on  their Facebook and website and lets fan track their favorite artist. Will Call is also a great app to find live music. As quoted by the New York Times it focuses primarily on the hipster crowd and is only available in New York and San Francisco. The new Music Punk app at musicpunk.com finds bands and dj's playing live near you and allows you to view a live music video before heading out. The Music Punk app is available in every city and has a great feature for bands and dj's to easily upload their gigs and tour calendars. You can download any of these apps in the iTunes and Google Play stores.  Of the three apps mentioned Music Punk seems to be most useful for the bands and music lovers alike.

Social Media Awards

Today social media websites are an important part of the online presence of both businesses as well as professionals like lawyers, actors, TV show hosts and sports persons. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google plus, Linkedin, Vimeo, Stumbleupon, YouTube, Friendfeed are some of the most popular social media websites, attracting millions of visitors from all over the world every day. An account can be created on these websites for free, with little verification except through email. These social media websites can be used both for marketing as well as to keeping in touch with clients, vendors as well as  business associates. One of the major advantages of social media is that a person does not have to spend his or her hard earned money on domain names, web hosting, website maintenance; all these aspects are taken care of automatically. The main investment for a social media account is the time, effort and money spent on content creation. 

Give Your Social Rating

Additionally, the main risk of developing a website is identity theft - one person does all the work, invests the money, but a fraud with powerful backers will claim ownership of the website just to earn some easy money. Additionally these powerful backers will make false accusations without any proof against the webmaster just to ruin the reputation. A disadvantage of using a social media account is that the account can be closed at any time.

 Since these accounts are usually free, it is very difficult to get any kind of support. The popularity of a social media account can be gauged from the number of people who are monitoring the account. For example, the number of Twitter followers is an indication of the popularity of the Twitter account, though others may be monitoring the account indirectly. While certain social media accounts have a large number of followers because the account owner is a high profile figure like a politician or celebrity, other social media accounts attract a large number of visitors because of the quality of the content, it can be interesting, funny, unique, entertaining. 

To reward quality content, social media awards have been instituted by different organizations and media firms, which allow internet users to vote for their favorite social media accounts. The social media awards site take into account that the criteria for evaluation of content quality will be different across categories, so internet users are able to request new categories if needed. They can suggest or vote for their favorite social media account. The social media awards may also be given based on the agency or brand, which is able to harness social media best for promoting their product or service. Separate awards may be awarded for each country based on the voting preferences of visitors from that country. 

The voting deadline for the social media awards is specified on the website. After the deadline, all the votes polled in each category are counted, to decide the winners. The social media awards are handed over to the winners at a social media awards ceremony, which is usually covered extensively in both the online and offline media.