Research: The music industry and social networking

How the Music Industry and Social Networking sites combine together 

Based on the advanced technology of today, social media has been a widespread phenomenon for online users, one of them being social networking sites such as MySpace. Social networking sites are often used to communicate with others over the use of the internet to stay in touch, share news and discover things.

In terms of the Music Industry, one artist in particular has used networking sites like MySpace to promote herself as an 'inexpensive' and 'viral' way to make herself known to the rest of the online world who goes by her stage name, Lily Allen.Unlike artists today, many lack an intimate or personal relationship with their fans, however, Allen challenged this and grew a fan base from her own MySpace account to lead her to where she is now. She achieved this by distributing exclusive content on the page to initially market herself as well as posting personal rants and photos documenting her personality connecting with her fans on a whole other level.

What else has Lily Allen done?

Much after gaining her large fan base, Allen went ahead and took advantage of social networking by promoting her single, 'The Fear' through something which personally, I have never come across and that is through a video game! Partnering up with 'Matmi', Allen used the concept of a game titled, 'Escape The Fear' which involves a cartoon like Lily Allen (Similar to the original Mario Bros.) on a platform based game shown below. Fans have the option to also buy her album and watch the music video, which to me is a pretty clever way to go about viral marketing!

Despite the 'now dissapearing' MySpace, many other artists follow in Allen's footsteps for viral marketing on their behalf. Apart from using video games to promote the artist, new artists are stepping up on viral marketing by producing simple, yet creative music videos online via YouTube. Although YouTube is not officially known as a social network, it is the basis of sharing multimedia online through social networks and which in this case has been proven successful. Below is a music video by a group called, OK Go who used this technique to create an online fanbase just by using the benefits of viral marketing.