The Impact of Social Media on Success in Music:
The Paradigm Shift of Gatekeeping from Record Labels to Users in Regards to Success of Music Products
Submitted Spring 2012.
SNS: Social network Services —a Japanese preferred label for social media
Abstract
Internet arguably revolutionized the creative industry in terms of spread, reach and cultivation of cultural capital for an audience who received a newfound access to things that are not confined primarily by the experience of smell or touch. This especially so in the music industry. Above all, the ability to spread a cultural good through the many Social Networking Services (SNS) available to an audience that is imbued with loyalty towards the person who shares a specific video/song/image has opened up new ways to acquire a following. Also, I will be looking into the effects of user influence on talent creation, which I will divide into three parts: emergence, reach and spread of an unsigned and before unknown artist. Today in addition to every kind of marketing, direct or indirect, is the influence by people closest to us, friends, family, colleagues, through the various news feeds we tend to check almost daily. This presents itself as a sophisticated problem for any kind of marketer: how do you convey a message from a brand or company to an audience that now receives most of its information about creative goods such as music from people they trust and have a close relationship with?
This paper aims to show the influence of the viral phenomenon in regards to the initial success of music artists and argues for an emergence of a new type of gatekeeper in the music market, which are situated among the consumers themselves who are not situated within the music industry. I will present a discourse about why the public is a force to be taken seriously in regards to both the artistic and financial aspects of current and future music industry dealings.
Keywords: Creative Industries, Social Network Services, Gatekeepers, Social Capital, Social media
Introduction
Social Networking Services SNS is the ability to interact and connect with billions of people all over the world. At a fundamental level SNS “consist of three or more entities communicating and sharing information.. social networking is about everyone.” (Weaver, Morrison: 97). And with bandwidths improving and storage capacity constantly evolving, the internet, and the sharing of media has outgrown any limitations it once faced in terms of the sharing and consumption of content. It has arguably become the most efficient way to have “digitizable” creative goods spread between consumers themselves. It also offers a useful way to obtain information about consumption based on the plethora of tools available to monitor consumer behavior.
Consumers have a more open platform than ever to consume and share music on more devices than ever, in addition to becoming more and more mobile with technologies which allow creative goods’ consumption to be more readily available. This has enabled a vast network of recommendation systems within social networks to take root and give rise to the viral phenomenon where a creative good in digital form can be spread with seemingly instant speed among users of SNS. Up until the creation of the internet, and with rising popularity of social networking services such as Myspace (www.myspace.com), Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Youtube (www.youtube.com) amongst others, the music industry and artists used to rely on what Caves (2000: 21) refers to as gatekeepers:
“Each creative realm has its set of intermediaries who select artists. The intermediaries’ choices serve their own mixtures of motives. Dedication to advancing the art is often present, but profit is usually sought, and the costs of humdrum inputs must be covered. Sociologists call these intermediaries ‘gatekeepers,’ which is apt given that the market for aspiring artists does not clear at a positive price: many are excluded at the gate, although they would gladly sign the contract that the gatekeeper offers to those who pass.”
Humdrum inputs are the inputs involved in the creation of a creative product excluding the basic creative process (as for example the actual composition of the song). Gatekeepers, before the proliferation of the internet, have practically enjoyed a monopoly in having the major influence on the success of a song, the initial success of an artist’s introduction into the exclusive supply chains of record labels, and in regards to attaining exposure and aid (humdrum inputs) during the rise of an artist to “superstardom”.
This “monopoly” had a profound influence on the shape of the music industry and the music culture in terms of the distribution and consumption of new music. Today, we face different an artist can earn traction derived from the appreciation of a song by a vast audience that willingly shares the artist’s creation through their network channels on whatever SNS they happen to be using. A phenomenon explained by Volz (2006: 662) as: “A Virtual community (VC) is an internet-based community compound of active members having a joint focus of interest […] a VC allows people, artists and managers of the music industry to communicate.” This enables record labels to gain access to consumption behavior of consumers of online music with ease. Furthermore, with sites like Youtube, which allow its users to upload videos freely but with certain restrictions regarding copyrighted content, music producers and labels can gain access to metrics about the consumption of popular content simply by reviewing the view count provided by the service in question.
What consumers consume, when, why and how becomes pivotal when trying to commercialize on a musical good in the internet age. Which then beckons the question that we want to answer in this paper, whether users of SNS, who do not belong to the music industry, are becoming the new gatekeepers for the music industry?
The viral phenomenon is described by Howard (1995): “Viral is today’s electronic equivalent of old-fashioned word of mouth. It’s a marketing strategy that involves creating an online message that’s novel or entertaining enough to prompt consumers to pass it on to others — spreading the message across the Web like a virus at no cost to the advertiser”.
In addition to the viral phenomenon the question as to why users of SNS choose to share certain songs and artist content warrants a deeper look into. For this an explanation of the Social Capital Theory (Claridge 2004) will be presented as argument as to why users of SNS feel motivated to share and contribute to a song’s viral effect. Social capital being the way users of SNS chose to present themselves through their musical preference and thus build their online persona (Silfverberg et al. 2011: 207).
Sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter (www.twitter.com) and Youtube will be presented as valuable instruments for an artist’s reach and exposure in conjunction with the initial success. The term reach explains the connectivity and the number of people available in exchanging information. Furthermore, the functions and motivation for why the SNS work as instruments for the new gatekeepers, will be given attention. Arguments involving the Long Tail Approach coined by Chris Anderson will be used to describe the passive positive effects of SNS and user sharing of songs for artist success and proliferation of music choices. The diffusion of the so called viral phenomenon and social value of music goods through various SNS has lead to a disassembly of the monopoly of record label gatekeepers and their power to make or break the success of an artist and resulted in a paradigm shift empowering consumers.
Background — The Change of Gatekeeping in the Music Industry
In the beginning stages of the internet, users had no way of instantly connecting with one another and record labels enjoyed a monopoly stranglehold in the music market, governing which artist would be bestowed with access to its valuable supply chain and network. This made entry for independent artist next to impossible (Graham et al.: 1087).
It can be said that a great product sells itself. Unsurprisingly, if a good is deemed to provide greater value than the cost of acquiring it customers will commit to the purchase. Therefore to judge whether or not an experience good such as music is worthy of a purchase, sampling is important (Leyshon 2001: 52 and Bhattacharjee et al. 2006: 1506). But sampling is not the sole denominator for judging a song’s value for consumers. The recommendations from friends and strangers alike occurring on SNS also play a part in how consumers value and perceive music. As Volz points out, the search for new music through virtual communities can be made easier by basing the selection on the consumption of other consumers (662). However, before the internet, the availability of music exploration, the song market, could have been said to be limited to the controlled exposure the audience received from whatever channel of radio or other medium listened to. Alternatively to the physical realm of documents, books and CDs etc (Graham et al. 2004: 1090). An artist would have to be under the umbrella of a record label in order to enjoy the networks and supply chains it had to offer and similarly the sway of the label in its prospect for the artists success. Because to reach an audience, to allow them to sample, expensive physical input was necessary.
Today music consumption is not based on preference alone, it is a cornerstone of people’s online persona, used as a tool for creating perception among peers and standing out from the crowd, or creating associations of belonging to one. The finding and consumption of bands and their music plays a role in the cultural capital of users (Nettamo et al. 2006). I define cultural capital as the accumulated wealth of knowledge pertaining to cultural goods available to the public.
The content provided by radio for example can be said to have been completely governed by two sorts of gatekeepers: the station with its DJs and the label that signed the artist whose contract with the station stipulated how it allowed the song to be played. This limited the audiences ability to fully grasp what was available to them on the market since they were limited to listen to artists that had successfully become signed by a label. Success was thus synonymous with getting signed to a company which could provide the inputs needed to receive exposure and hopefully in turn success, the humdrum inputs. Additionally, the limitation was also geographical, since the audience only had access to whatever reach the radio signal had. Independent artists offering their music were in most cases unable to find a channel to spread their creative goods.1 This was the power of the gatekeepers before the internet, and before SNS, that is, they could control the music content offered to the listeners. Magazines and concerts existed but could not provide the targeted audience with a sampling of the experience good, i.e a song being offered prior to the show, and thus had no means to become credible and attain value in the eyes of the consumers to justify the purchase of a concert ticket.
The internet and SNS changed this situation in a beneficial way for the artist. With various streaming services such as Youtube and Soundcloud2 (www.soundcloud.com), amongst many others, artists are now able to instantly find a venue accessible to millions of users. Instead of obtaining a coveted record deal with a big record label, it has become possible to upload material online for anyone to consume. And because of this one can make the assumption that attaining a viral status equals the success of a contract. Since the proved success of a song or artists is translatable in profit and a risk free investment since the good has been favorably judged by the sampling of consumers. These are the fundamental differences in autonomous versus synthetic success.
Internet has much less limitation when it comes to accessibility for the public. Thus exposure can be translated into the incentive of the audience to spread the track, which is where SNS plays a big role. If your song is likable to a person they can choose to share your song through their network earning the artist valuable exposure inaccessible before the popularization of the internet. This can be called autonomous success — that is, the success based on the song or the artist’s merit by itself. If a song is good enough in the eyes of enough people so that it could be shared and made into a hit all by itself. Synthetic success can be summarized by the excessive humdrum inputs provided by a record label in order to make a song or artists popular through heavy marketing and utilization of networks. It can also be argued that if a song or an artist is seen as a way to add to your online person and earn social capital amongst your friends the sharing of a song could be incentivized as well. This statement underlines the findings made by Silfverberg et al. (2011) when discussing profile work in music focused SNS where music is highlighted as an important role of users in regards to online identity, and the consequential adaptation of the behavior of the users in regards to music preferences. The statement that users are said to “consider their profiles to be products that are guided by the interpretations of others and their own behavior” (ibid.: 210) underscores how consumer behavior in regards to music consumption not only is changing, but also how it influences the music industry in terms of the purchasing patterns of its users. Users are now not governed solely by their own consumer preference (as referring to their own taste at a certain moment in their lives) but also by the desired interpretations of their online self made available on SNS. They thus consume differently from what they would if they had their music consumption confined to physical copies in their private room, only visible to friends or other persons admitted into their private spaces. The reference group is extended and alters their behavior.
The internet and the advent of SNS has changed the classic supply chains of music distribution and promotion. As Graham et al. (2004) argues, the classic supply chain of artist created music is made up of record labels which promote and distribute the music and the fans who consume it. The shift in the music supply chain due to the internet revolution, by adding a layer of influence and a channel for distribution and promotion, with limited control on the sides of the record labels, is having a significant impact on the market and is weakening the power and dominance of the big record labels (ibid. 2004: 1087). In the same paper, Graham et al. suggest that the “stranglehold” as they name it, of the market by the big 53 is likely to lessen due to the increasing ease of other players to enter the market (ibid. 1088). Those players can be said to be artists themselves which have found an opportunity in digital music creation with its low nominal cost of production to circumvent the second step of the supply chain, the record labels, when entering a market. With the internet and its many different SNS, it has become a viable channel for any one with an internet connection to upload, spread and gain an audience by their own efforts, despite limited budget, and eventually achieve success by reaching a status level high enough to gain the attention of gatekeepers of the industry and record labels. This being said, the old channels are not completely removed, nor replaced, but another layer is added that now offers an alternative to skip parts of the classic selection process only to be integrated on a later stage.
SNS and it’s Value for Music
Up until the eruption of the internet and the success of SNS, artists had to struggle with reaching an audience, with financial restraints and other limitations of resources to make it all happen. The onset of SNS and its theoretical ability to provide access to millions or even billions of people within a short time frame, broke down, in part, the traditional gatekeeper’s absolute value of offering to take on and to spread an artist’s material. To what extent is not clear. Now however, artists themselves can sign up for free with an internet service that provides a way to reach an audience, distribute their music and hopefully get enough exposure to be picked up by a label and enjoy further humdrum inputs to become a bigger success if desirable.
No other site has been so vital for this process as Myspace, when it comes to the cultivation of initial exposure and viral word of mouth by yet unsigned artists. Myspace can be said to have been the first big SNS,4 and it provided artists with every tool necessary to create an initial success, theoretically. On the site, any one with an email was able to register and create an account, which made it different from other SNS such as Facebook, where the sign up process is more strict (Weaver and Morrison 2008: 98). Later in the history of SNS there have sprung up diverse services offering a very similar way of building loyalty and gaining reach with an audience. Tools such as the Facebook pages and the Youtube view count enabled record labels to communicate with users in addition to interacting with customers directly through label and artist web sites, which basically all record labels are doing (Graham et al. 2004). Nine out of the twelve interviewees answered this “gave them the opportunity to learn more about consumer needs” (1094). Moreover, Google analytics (www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/), a powerful web based tool allowing insights into traffic density of almost anything which can aid record labels to determine the online popularity of an artist or song by inputting the right search parameters. Determining a song or an artists online klout has been monetized already by companies like Big Champagne (www.bigchampagne.com) who offers insight into the popularity of music goods and players based on online popularity.
Myspace is a community based site that “drives social interaction by providing a highly personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love”.5 Through this formula and having enjoyed the “first mover” advantage, Myspace became the biggest online forum for social networking and sharing of media. But after other social network services emerged, such as Facebook, which was offering a more clean-cut and integrated user experience for people, Myspace declined in user numbers and value. Thus in April 2008 Myspace saw it’s clout move to second place from the first.6 Since then Myspace has taken the niche approach and divided itself into Myspace and Myspace Music, offering a social network and a platform for unsigned and signed artists to share material and to connect with other users. The shift from being an all together SNS to a more niched one aiming for music becomes clear in CEO Tim Vanderhook’s statement quoted by Mashable in February 2012 when he said: “Myspace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love,” and further: “Consumers are getting excited about Myspace again — a testament to a great music product.” This approach seems to be working, Myspace today boasts of enormous numbers in regards to it’s contribution to the overall music landscape, claiming to have discovered 8 million artists since its initial launch in 2003.
Amongst these 8 million artists there have been varied levels of success. Among the top tier breakout acts, popular names like Lilly Allen, Adele and Sean Kingston can be found. Lily Allen and Adele alone can claim record album sales of over 33.5 million copies worldwide and awards such as the Guinness world record of having the best sold album of the 21st century (Crookes 2012). That in itself provides a strong argument for just how important SNS and the internet has become in regards to the cultivation of the music market success and subsequently the industry behind it. Today artists are born from the consumption and preferences of consumers and not solely from the endorsement of record labels.
Not only Myspace, now other SNS offer similar services to artists. Facebook, at present the biggest SNS available online based on users8 has since a few years offered artists to interact with fans through the pages service which allows fans and followers to like posts of an update or comment on them (Hachman 2012). Additionally, artists may post songs directly to the site and then share them with their followers who then may decide to re-share the post to their virtual community which may result in a viral effect for the artist. Before this, artists arguably only had as much reach as their local clubs could offer, or as much as they could reach by selling and sampling of physical CDs through give aways or physical mail.
The spread of albums and singles was restricted to physical copies and consequently limited to whatever budget the artist had at their disposal. Myspace meant virtually unlimited reach and exposure. And it is simple. All an artist has to do is to go to Myspace, sign up for an account, and then upload songs into a music player which shows the number of times any song has been streamed. Myspace, in a sense, removed the barrier to have gatekeepers in terms of reach. Arguably, an artist’s needs promotion, and bought exposure in terms of various ad spaces and product placement such as time on radio, internet marketing and in other types of media channels.
Additionally there is Myspace records. Founded in 2005 Myspace records aims to sign and distribute music from the artists using Myspace as a way to reach an audience. It is a joint venture with established label Interscope records “hoping to capitalize on its broad reach among music-savvy consumers” (The Associated Press, 2005). This further provides a way for artists to circumvent the traditional way of music gatekeeping in respects to having a new way of being discovered and signed.
Facebook, according to Hachman (2012) is at present the biggest SNS available online based on users.9 Has since a few years offered artists to interact with fans through the Pages service which allows fans and followers to like posts of an update or comment on them. Users are encouraged to share and like posts from artists and take part in discussions through the comments posted by every other user which also subscribe to the same artist. Pages creates somewhat of a community, a forum for fans to feel like they make a difference to the artists by helping him/her become more known, knowingly becoming part of the desired viral effect.
Social Capital
The behavior of recommendation of music occurring in SNS can to some extent be attributed to the concept of Social Capital. Social Capital is open for interpretation and Claridge offers numerous definitions of it, among them: “social relations that have productive benefits” but also notes that Social Capital has no definite definition.
Therefore I propose that in this paper Social Capital as a concept will take on the form of social interactions which affect the self-presentation through self-construction, concepts of psychology in online personas introduced by Silfverberg et al. (2011: 208).
People care about how they are perceived online through various forms of actions and consumption behavior. The care for privacy and management of online personas drive users to commit to consumption behavior that deviates from their consumer behavior without without online influences, or, profile regulation of online accounts on SNSs through fear of embarrassment.
It is “the psychological feature called self-presentation [that] causes people to worry about how they appear in front of others” (ibid. 208). By liking, sharing and following artists, users of SNS build a persona for others to see online. To explain how potent online self-construction is, Silfverberg et al. notes that “users are ready and willing to go as far as changing the actual music listening behavior for the sake of their profiles” (ibid. 208).
Online social behavior is not solely based on the manipulation of ones online persona, self-construction, the natural affection for songs and artists also motivates users to join in a viral behavior for the spread of music goods. However, a social pressure arguably exists where people’s action or inaction on online platforms shapes even the offline real self in social situations, as topics of online behavior more and more are becoming a topic in offline conversations. Therefore in regards to success of an artist or songs, social capital is proposed as a vital component for motivation to contribute to a viral effect through the virtual communities of SNS.
Music and its choices, if governed through the concept of infinite variety, as presented by Caves (2000: 202: “An enormous array of varied “raw” creative products or potential products is always at hand”) which coincides and gives basis for when Silfverberg et al. 2011 describes the choices of music and its conjunction with music consumption to be “an identification tool for both self and others”.11 Internet has provided the average consumer with a seemingly unlimited choice of choices whether one is using Apple’s a la carte iTunes store, Amazon or illegally downloading from the various torrent based P2P12 services available for free.
Consuming music and finding music have become even easier with the evolution of technology through the ease of portability of mp3 music players. Such devices can even act as an online music store, and with bandwidth and storage space increasing, music becomes readily available to consumers anywhere if they have an internet connection.
A survey made through the automated music playcount SNS Last fm showed that there are cultural differences in consumer behavior based on the plethora of choices available. The result was that in New York user tended to prioritize individuality, and finding new acts and songs were deemed important in stark contrast to consumers in Hong Kong which valued social acceptance and mainstream music which coincided with music consumption behavior of friends (Nettamo et al. 2006:90). Based on this, music consumption and how users of SNS decide to share songs is not defined by preference alone. By having a socially integrated virtual community with friends the management of an online persona plays an important role. Depending on the culture, the sharing behavior can be motivated by the desire to cultivate an individualistic self-presentation. In this way, users tend to consume and share music that reaffirms their online identity which then allows them to further organize their efforts of self-construction.
The notion that music is used not only as entertainment but a psychological tool to present and construct an online identity which changes the consumption behavior of users of SNS have the effect of mass-psychosis benefiting artists. If a user desire to identify with the mainstream music group of consumers the choice of artist and song become very finite and choice is decreased to what Nettamo et al. refers to as artists of “‘top 20’ web
sites” (2006: 90). In today’s SNS dense internet the most popular, mainstream, artists could be said to be the ones enjoying the biggest following on sites like Twitter, Facebook and have the most play counts and likes on Youtube. Therefore an artist or song13 can enjoy success not only for it being a creative product, but also by it being considered a tool for creating an identity.
Attention should also be given to links of music videos and linked content about songs and artists that tend to proliferate on Facebook newsfeeds, shared by friends as part of their online identity self-construction behavior. Alternatively, as shown by the survey,14 online music sharing of songs and artists can also take on a more individualistic approach, as not all users are prone to choose mainstream content, but rather prefer independent artists. The behavior of sharing content, whether group oriented or not, has beneficial results for music proliferation. This will be discussed further in the section about the long tail effect.
The Motivation to Pass Along Media
As explained before, the viral phenomenon is today’s electronic equivalent of yesterday’s word of mouth. And it is the passing along and motivation thereof of a digitized good, here music, that is key to the argument why users of SNS are becoming the new gatekeepers of the music market. Today the recommendations from friends about online media has become an important part in how internet users find content (Ho et al. 2009:1000). This underlines an important and vital aspect that the proliferation of SNS usage has had on the interaction of people in regards to creative content such as music. SNS and the creation of an online self has become a compelling motivation in itself, for whatever reason, to pass along, digest and recommend music.
To fully grasp the force of SNS on the matter of a song’s success, the viral phenomenon (explained through the words of Howard earlier15) a closer investigation of the reasons as to why users are motivated to share is warranted. As seen earlier, Nettamo et al. presents the discourse of cultural differences in regards to online music consumption behavior and presents variations in consumption psychology between consumers in New York and Hong Kong. Ho et al. and their research about internet user’s motivation to pass along online content will be presented to further develop this theory. The results provided adds to the explanation about the psychology theory of the sharing motivation behavior and views the sharing of online content as something to be viewed as a conversation, “as a possible forum for interpersonal communication” (1001).
Ho et al. presents three salient factors for the reason why people feel the motivation to share content online. These factors are inclusion, affection and control. Inclusion is described as the “need to belong and the need to be unique” which correlate to the survey done by Nettamo et al. that one motivation to share content is through the control and construction of a social capital and cultivation of an online self where the result is either to use music consumption as a mean for belonging to a group or defining a more individualistic persona. Affection is “the need to maintain a satisfactory relationship, leading individuals to engage in behaviors related to intimacy, warmth and emotional involvement” (1001).16 Here more dimensions pertaining to the discourse of motivation to spread one’s online consumption behavior in regards to self-construction is presented as the notion of emotions and intimacy toward other users in the virtual community. This would mean that the sharing of a song has beneficial aspects in addition to social group dynamics. Lastly, control is introduced as the third motivator for people to forward media content online. Control covers the aspiration to control one’s online self and mold it into a representative version of how one would like to be perceived (1002), this correlates highly to the idea of self-construction aforementioned by Silfverberg et al. (2011). Although these three concepts are introduced as motivators to forwarding content online, control is considered to pertain more towards creating a representative persona in a professional and/or academic setting. Therefore, as an explanation as to why users of SNS feel the desire to share media content with one another inclusion and affection is prioritized as contributing explanations.
Synthetic Success
When presenting an explanation as to why users of SNS decide to share and how they chose to share online media in regards to the success of music, it becomes important to also make a distinction between two forms of success: the autonomous and the synthetic version. Online users are implored to like, share and interact with a plethora of content ranging from various brand messages to online game content to incentive based discounts triggered by the recruiting of friends. Content that is conceived by companies from intricate and professional marketing humdrum inputs which has the agenda to make financial profit from the desired viral behavior of users is the latter form of success. It has been conceptualized, created, marketed and executed by firms to cultivate monetary gains.
In music this can refer to the careful development of an artist’s image or history and the subsequent marketing blitzkrieg orchestrated by companies like the big 4.17 One big difference between being signed and being independent is the distinction of having a humdrum entourage or not. Here humdrum entourage is meant to refer to whatever non- creative input a record label can inject into the perceived success of an artist’s creative good. This rings true for most superstar top ten chart artists that enjoy the backing of big labels to reach a large audience. Important to note is that artists are not confined anymore to this model of success.
Authentic Success
Today through the many SNS available, an artist or a song can enjoy chart success based purely on the merits of the creative input, what Caves calls the art-for art’s sake property: “The prevalence and strength of tastes that affect the qualities and quantity of creative effort” (2000: 4). Before the internet and existence of SNS, art for art’s sake could be intertwined with the notion of a starving artist that would rather defend the ethics of the creative work than succumb to the corporate greed of companies motivated by monetary gain.18 A song or artist that gains a viral effect purely based on the merit of an art for art’s sake creative good is said to have attained autonomous success. Autonomous success is success attained without humdrum inputs of labels and in many cases propelled by the voluntary behavior of users of SNS to spread the good motivated by, but not confined to, inclusion or affection. It is important to take into account that both the autonomous and the synthetic success properties can take place at any point in time of an artist’s or a song’s success which will be explained further in the next section of the paper.
Proliferation of Music
According to Tyler (2002: 18): “The ‘creative destruction’ of the market is, in surprising ways, artistic in the most literal sense. It creates a plethora of innovative and high-quality creations in many different genres, styles, and media. Furthermore, the evidence strongly suggests that cross-cultural exchange expands the menu of choice, at least provided that trade and markets are allowed to flourish”
In this paper an argument is made that the internet through various SNS and recommender systems has proliferated the choice available to consumers in addition to allowing greater freedom for cross-cultural exchange. Internet is mostly a free forum of information, and restrictions of digital purchase through official channels such as Apple’s iTunes store may be circumvented by illegal downloading of restricted content, for instance through torrent P2P services. The proposition that the world is more connected than ever due to the spread of the internet would also entail that the market for cultural goods have become more available globally as well. Thus the menu of choice for consumers has expanded in terms of both artist content and a breakdown of national barriers through whichever form of procurement.
This could be the reason as to why an arguably culturally specific artist such as the J-Pop artist Kyaru pamyu pamyu was able to reach the number one position in the iTunes store in Finland (also Belgium), which is perhaps the country that is most famous for death metal, with bands such as Lordi, in 2011.19 Kyaru’s success in a culture as remote as Finland merely by making her song available to the market only through iTunes, without humdrum inputs from a record label, provides a strong argument for the concept of the autonomous success artists can enjoy through the internet solely from the merits of a song’s appreciation by consumers. It highlights the possibility of unimportance of physical presence by both the artists and a label today in regards to success, which was crucial for it before the spread of digitized media.20
Internet and SNS work in synergy to proliferate the availability of actors in the music industry, deconstructing old supply chain models favoring record label monopoly and ease of entry into markets. As Graham et al. (2004: 1095) explains:
“the music industry is undertaking a process of supply chain deconstruction, which will lead to a proliferation in the number of potential actors involved in the supply of music, each of which will have its own unique source of competitive advantage.
Therefore, the supply of music in the digital age will consist of many different players, because the entry barriers to the music industry have been significantly lowered with decreasing transaction and production costs”.21
This statement is supported by several studies22 and can also be illustrated using the Long Tail approach made popular by Chris Anderson in 2006 and summarized by Celma and Cano (2008: 1) “The Long Tail is composed by a very few popular items, the well–known hits, and the rest, located in the heavy tail, that does not sell that well”. This entails that if there was no physical CDs for consumers to purchase or artists to do promotion through whichever medium preferred, TV, radio etc. arguably they did not exist as an option on the market from the vantage point of consumers. There was no forum for which the song could proliferate amongst users.
According to Evans and Wurster 1997. 22 Volz 2006: 665, Celma et al. 2008: 1. the long tail allows the popularity of a hit to trickle down to music discovery otherwise not easily found. For example, Youtube as a free service offers recommended videos based on the video currently being viewed. This allows consumers of video content on the site to dive further into other songs by an artist, or to try out songs similar to it. The hit is the attraction that leads people to get interested into the heavy tail. Gotye, an Australian singer/songwriter experienced modest success until his song Somebody that I used to know attained autonomous success and was propelled into a viral phenomenon. Taking the Youtube statistics into account, available on the site, an observation can be made that the hit Somebody that I used to know allowed for other songs to be found. When Somebody I used to know propelled in user views into the hundred of millions his other songs saw a very similar chart behavior during the same time meaning that some users that listened to the hit song also decided to click into the other songs recommended by Youtube. Even Kimbra an artist featured on the track enjoyed a similar surge of attention for her songs on the site as the interest for the hit song trickled down further along the long tail i.e the heavy part.23 Gotye stands as evidence that autonomous viral success may come at a later stage in an artist’s career even after several record releases.
SNS and recommender systems motivated by the various desires to share content can today make an artist rise to fame. Because of the next to nothing cost of entry into the online market and services such as Youtube, artist have a venue and forum presented to them as tools for initial success. Justin Bieber, the Canadian adolescent pop-sensation with numerous top hits and record sales in the millions, uploaded himself on Youtube and gained traction from users willing to freely consume and share his content. This allowed him to gain sufficient reach and popularity so that Scooter Braun of RGMG25 in 2008 decided to sign him and provide the humdrum inputs needed for him to become even bigger (Konjicanin 2010).
Autonomous success is not confined to the benefit of artists only. By receiving greater ability to communicate with consumers, record labels as well have a better understanding of the market and can thus with more accurate precision device marketing schemes and distribution strategy of further synthetic success as they may work in tandem through different stages of an artist’s career (Graham et al. 2004: 1092). In addition to market entry, the gatekeeper function, by users approving the success before an artist becomes signed or has the need for humdrum inputs, hedges against the folly of the few, the gatekeepers of record labels, to make mistakes in appreciating an artist’s worth.26 SNS and the new gatekeepers, the users and consumers, provides not just a wider plethora offered by enjoying a cheap entry into the market, but also a more rigorous evaluation mechanism to identify appreciation of music goods. SNS and the internet are changing the music market into a market for and by the consumers themselves.
Conclusion
Internet has revolutionized the way people connect around the world, and SNS has changed the way people share, consume and interpret music. SNS and the internet has allowed music to play not just a bigger part in the persona of people but it has also allowed a disintegration of the classical distribution model of music. By providing a cost free alternative to the classic make it or break it record deal, artists are allowed to upload their creative goods and share it to millions of people all over the world which then holds the power to make that good a hit through autonomous success. The notion that an artist or song may achieve success solely on the merit of the creative good itself. This because consumers today engage in a different sharing behavior than from the time when sampling, and music consumption was confined by physical material. Today notions ofinclusion and affection amongst other govern the motivations of consumers to spread a good through their virtual communities and thus may create a viral effect where a song’s reach attain an avalanche like behavior of proliferation between consumers. The creation and cultivation of an online self are governed by self-perception by self-construction in an attempt to cultivate one’s social capital. This underlines the new dynamics of consumption behavior of music and why music has become more than just an experience good but also a tool for group dynamics psychology.
Through these new variables of consumption and spread of music the users of SNS — the new gatekeepers of music, have created a new market model for music success. They create, sample and proliferate music choices between themselves and act as a synergetic force in allowing new music and before obscure artists to take center stage based on a good’s creative by bestowing them with viral status. Something traditional record labels did not have the power to and sometimes shunned away artists that had enormous potential from.
There has been a diffusion of power from traditional notions of music gatekeeping to the consumers themselves through virtual communities such as SNS. The traditional gatekeepers still hold power and play a pivotal role of endowing vital humdrum inputs for artists to either break in or become even bigger in an ever changing music market. It is arguable to proclaim a creative destruction of the music industry based on the introduction of a free forum for consumers to share, judge and consume music through internet and SNS. SNS has, in an artistic way destroyed old models of the music market and success achieved in it. It has created a plethora of artistic choices through more varied forms than before. It has allowed for a greater cross-cultural pollination of the menu of choice through collective gatekeeping of high quality and innovative creations that before the advent of SNS was confined to the favor of monetary motives and the pollice verso27 of record labels.
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