Are social media a thing for your music writer job?

[maxquaini]

Hello guys and apologize for being off for a Century, kinda weird for a life time member… I promise I’ll be more active!

Btw, I was wondering about what kind of relationship you have with social media and if you’re finding them useful for your music writer job.

Personally, I did quit all my socials – apart Twitter and Reddit – considering them kinda useless for my job (I’m not really into socials anyway). Indeed it sounds wrong in a world always more social oriented, but there’s a very important thing to keep in mind in my opinion.
If you want to stand out, as an example, on YT or IG, you’ll have to spend time, a lot of time, in order to create outstanding content, and you’ll also have to be constant, you’ll have to keep regularly posting content. It’s crazily time consuming, tons of precious hours subtracted to your music production time.
Maybe somebody can do both, but I personally prefer to double down the effort producing music all my working time.
Useless to keep in mind that the music licensing career is a marathon and not a race, one more reason to put all the effort producing as much and as good quality music as possible making sure you’re growing your catalog.

My personal sensation – and please tell me what you think about that in particular – is that rather than being just another anonymous guy on socials with only a few (maybe not even that interested) followers, you better stay out of the games. In poor words:

STAND OUT ON SOCIALS OR STAY OUT OF THE GAMES

It might be a wrong attitude, but it’s just my “boomer” point of view, and I would l love to hear what’s your personal experience and approach with the main socials, successful or unsuccessful stories.

Regarding this I would also love to hear the opinion of music supervisors – if there’s any reading – if they’ll find out your social profile is nothing more than just another meh thing, isn’t it working against you and your music writer job?
Aren’t you risking to make a bad impression to music supervisors? But also… Do they really care if you’re on social? I don’t think it really matter that much for them, I like to think they only care about the music you’re sending them, your professionalism and reliability. I can also imagine that if they are gonna find something really interesting on socials they might want to get in touch, but I personally think having a good personal website might matter more than being on socials. Let me please know if you agree or disagree.

I’m also very well aware we all here are having very different experiences, and different relationships with different libraries, we all have a different story, and most likely there’s not a right or wrong way but just the right one for each one of us.
In my case, my choice was to leave away from socials but I would love to hear if somebody decided and was able to take advantage of them.

Can’t wait to hear from you!

[Art Munson]

@maxquaini. Yeh, I kind of agree with you. I have it pretty well automated for MLR and tried it with music. Works pretty well for MLR but I think is a waste in the wasteland of social media. Just too much stuff out there. Personal contacts will always be the better way to go, IMHO.

[maxquaini]

Thank you Art,
your opinion matter a lot, I guess you used the key words, “personal contacts”.
That’s what worked for me but curious to know about other guys as well 🙂

[Mark_Petrie]

I don’t think you need to commit to a YouTube or IG channel that uploads new content every couple of days. But there’s a lot of good that come out of interacting with people in the business, commenting on their posts, congratulating them etc. Let people know you’re alive.
LinkedIn is a more professional crowd and it seems like just about every library owner / supervisor is on there.

[maxquaini]

Interacting with people in the business is certainly a good point, still, if you don’t have a content to show I am not sure how much you’ll get noticed. Maybe forums and communities are a better place where to interact, like here for example.

I have been for a while on LinkedIn but honestly I couldn’t find it particularly useful – regarding our work – despite the presence of many supervisors. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like the way LinkedIn is getting always more similar to FBook, where people seems more worried about spamming contents rather then really use it for its original purpose. It’s still a successful platform for more traditional jobs.

Btw, if you have some successful stories to share on LinkedIn I would be happy to hear them.

[Mc_GTR]

There is a lot of babble on some that you have to post frequently, high qual and all that, but you can have accounts on your own terms. You don’t have to follow that advice, if you don’t have much reason to grow your channels fast.

Some is great for research, and hooking up with likeminded people, and your channel will grow anyway at a slow pace, even if you don’t do much. You can treat it anyway you want, it can be your CV, it can be a collective of friends, it can showcase some of your work, it can be your artist profile/ brand, it can just be fun faffing around.

Anyway, you can just use some casual, without putting any pressures on yourself. I like it on those terms.

[Bronxbomba]

I thought about this as well and in my opinion managing a huge social media presence takes away from productivity. The occasional posting doesn’t hurt but ultimately the question is do you want to be a social media figure or land placements? I tend to only post placements because I think results speak the loudest. And the placements are what lead me to more briefs and contacts.

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