Sorry for the rant. Let's talk about the hot topic.
I decided to do this post because, as I've said before, I'm going deep into this project. I am being an overachiever. It's okay. Draining, but okay. Therefore, I am engaging with the processes of social media and how it creates image, serves as a marketing tool, interacts with the fans, keeps a band/artist alive, etc. Fascinating stuff. Of course, to fully immerse in it and grasp the concepts I had to do a LOT of research, so I went ahead and chose a few bands to use as my case studies.
The basics of each social media for bands are:
- YouTube: used to post music videos, "behind the scene" material, interviews, live performances, and recently "track-by-track" (will discuss it further)
- Twitter: news! The news that people will see when they are scrolling down their feeds, such as concert dates, new videos, album release, etc. Makes up for people not checking the website every single day,
- Instagram: lots of cool pictures from shows, on the road, during recording sessions -you name it! Even some videos, but short ones -previews or sneak peaks.
- Facebook: acts like a website. There's pictures, videos, tour dates, news, everything. When people like a page they will get posts from that page on their feed and they can also choose to receive notifications.
Been talking about them a lot, I know. I swear I was never a huge fan of RHCP, even though I liked their songs, but what can I do? They are really useful for me right now. I think the biggest thing with RHCP is that they are a immensely famous band which has been "alive" for a long time now. I wrote an essay last year on music marketing using them as one of my case studies, and I discussed how they are able to keep the fan base from the origin of the band in the 80s and attract newer generations.
- YouTube: 2.42M subscriptions. They did this cool thing on the platform that seems rather popular nowadays, which is the "track-by-track". They are a series of videos interviews with a band member, each exploring how a song of the album was created (they look like the picture to the right). They even had some "extra" ones, with topics ranging from the video I posted above to preshow rituals.
- Twitter: 2.17M followers. They had the whole #TheGetaway trend going on previous to the album release up to now, since they're going on tour.
- Instagram: 1.5M followers. Post some really random stuff that's also really cool.
- Facebook: 26.35M likes
- Tumblr: their Tumblr basically serves as a website, only there's no pages separating the content. It's a useful tool to connect with a younger, more alternative audience.
- Mobile Roadie: whaaaaat? I know. This is an app that people can download straight on their mobile devices and have all of the RHCP they want. A lot of companies and some other artists like Taylor Swift use Mobile Roadie. It serves as an app for the dedicated fans to keep updated on... whatever it is.
They are an alternative rock band from the U.S., who, for some reason, is now located in England. This really sucks for me, a big fan, who can never get a concert date because THEY ARE SO LIMITED IN THE U.S. Couldn't even get their last album when it was first released. Pure rage. But no hard feelings...
- YouTube: 200k subscriptions (but they get 2M-5M views on music videos). They did something similar to RHCP, but instead of calling it "track-by-track" they called it "webisodes". The major difference is that the videos were more "artsy" -and I'm very sorry for using this word-, including recording sessions footage, not simply one interview with one band member. The webisodes started about a month before the release of the album and went on to a day before. Good way to build up to the release and make fans more interested. What I don't like about it is how it focuses so much on the vocalist -no other members ever talk. But they're short videos, something that I could do as well that wouldn't be so time consuming.
- Twitter: 1.27M followers.
- Instagram: 258k followers.
- Facebook: 1.6M likes.
One Direction
On our first group meeting it was suggested to me to research a bit on One Direction and their marketing through YouTube. So I went on and did that, which is why I'd only be discussing YouTube for them and no other social media.
- Video diaries: in the beginning, One Direction used to record a lot of video diaries with group members by themselves, group members together. Some were just vlogs, where the member would talk about (check the one to the right for a topic). They had a whole 23-minutes video of an "ask:reply", which was first done live through VEVO and later posted on their YouTube page. Those also included interviews with the boys and behind the scenes during their tour.
- Bring Me To 1D: fans received golden tickets to go watch One Direction live in an acoustic session. The whole event was recorded and posted on YouTube on various episodes.
The idea of the video diaries is a pretty cool one, and it resembles the techniques used by RHCP and Cage the Elephant I mentioned. The biggest difference is that it doesn't only focus on the music but it also gives a background to the members of the group, a way for the fans to connect to them more. They also seem very honest and personal since they're like vlogs.
That's all I wanted to address in this post. This process of enlightenment on social media has been a long, tiresome one, but I know it's for the best. It's very important that I understand the different uses of each social media, and how I can use them for each of my specific needs. Through the case studies I was also able to get some ideas...
I have something amazing in my mind, but I won't say anything right now *soft evil laugh*. It'll be a surprise
surprise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Getaway_(Red_Hot_Chili_Peppers_album
https://youtube.com/rhcptv
https://twitter.com/chilipeppers
https://instagram.com/chilipeppers
https://facebook.com/chilipeppers
https://chilipeppers.tumblr.com/
https://mobileroadie.com/apps/rhcp
https://www.youtube.com/user/CageTheElephantVEVO
https://twitter.com/cagetheelephant
https://www.instagram.com/cagetheelephant/
https://www.facebook.com/cagetheelephant
https://mobileroadie.com/app-gallery
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