Tweets and Statuses: Record Labels Encourage Musicians to Embrace Social Networks

It's not a kept secret that the music industry has been hurting. With the boom of illegal downloading, labels are scrambling to make that extra money by making most out of the available resources. Even with legal downloads; there have been 1 million less online purchasers of music per NPD (leading global provider of consumer and retail market research).

As CNET's Greg Sandoval reports:"The music industry is in a major state of crisis and some up and coming acts are reluctant to dirty their hands with social networking". With the explosion of social networks, there has come this expectation for artists to get closer to their fans and vise versa. According to Sandoval, record labels are turning down artists because of their reluctance to do this. Most of them being pre-madonnas who think their only job is to make music. What does this push to use social networking sites really mean for artists and their music?

TechDirt's post Getting Part the 'But Artists Should Just Be Artists' Myth touches this question. There is a difference when it comes to being a musician today compared to before. With the massive impact of the internet on record sales, if you want to make music as a profession, you have to go the extra mile. Your whole career is in your hands, but also in the hands of your record label. As TechDirt mentioned, "Artists should just be artists" was a tool for labels to have more control over their bands. That is not the case today. Record labels recognize the importance of getting their artists to connect to their fans as a means of keeping their fans happy. Happy fans mean more sales.

Supporting this is Daniel Glass, founder of the label Glassnote, when he said "There may be some indie hipper-than-thou artists who want to let the music speak for itself. . . They are probably not for us. We believe an artist has a responsibility to communicate with their audience...We embrace the world of technology and the vast improvements in communication".

His labeling of "indie hipper-than-thou artists" may not have been very nice, but I have to agree. An artist should take pride in their music and want to see it flourish. This does not mean they have to sell their soul or completely expose their life in the internet.