Music journalism is not excused from the social media race

William Hoffman
wh092010@ohiou.edu

The front page of The New York Times no longer guarantees the greatest play for the top stories of the day if it's never shared on social media. Facebook and Twitter have forced journalists to completely rethink how stories are promoted, and that change is most evident in my world of music journalism.

Journalist-source relationships have always been closer and more ethically gray than other beats around the newsroom. And those problems have only increased as struggling and up-and-coming musicians constantly bombard my Twitter and Facebook with pleas to listen to new music and Twitter interactions to get the local crowd out to a show.

And while I hate that mild attention sometimes, the truth is I sympathise with these artists who travel many miles on personally-funded national tours only to play to an empty bar of apathetic college students. That's why they call me to try and get out the word that they are coming to town. And it's a platonic relationship because I need to meet a quota — so long as we don't get too friendly.

That relationship moves to social media as well. A simple event preview for a scrappy touring band doesn't usually make front-page news, but when the band has over 1,000 likes on Facebook and they share my article, all of a sudden I have a few hundred eyes on my byline. Again the artist is able to spread the word through play in the paper as well as social media.

Provided by Jack Gould (right)

I get excited when I'm covering a band with a large social media following. Sometimes the bands will even use paid promotion.

Sassafraz, an experimental jazz rap group out of Columbus with a number of Athenians, frequently uses this paid promotions method.

Saxophonist and manager for the band, Jack Gould, even wrote a thesis here at Ohio University about musicians' relationship to social media and how bands can get more eyes on their page. In the thesis he was able to track the progress of promotion for three different bands over the course of a few months and see which posts worked the best. He found that that paid promotions really did help bring more eyes to the links, however they were expensive and should only be used to promote the biggest shows.

But there is still plenty of competition in music journalism. There seems to be a race to get out album reviews.

When Kanye West's 2013 album Yeezus leaked you could feel the publications scrambling on Twitter to get that review out and get eyes on it as soon as possible. Kanye is simply a very prolific character in pop culture and his album was so controversial and innovative that people didn't seem to know what to do except drown it in praise right of the bat without giving any regard to lyrical content. This in turn sparks online debate with fans and Kanye gets a lot of publicity. But is it good for the publication which has to justify the numerical rating at the end of the year?

Music is always changing and just because I listen to an album once and kind of like it doesn't mean I'll like it as much, or at all, in a week after the third listen. Journalists in the world of review and criticism need to be just as cautious about this rat race on social media as the breaking news guys. That numerical rating will stay online forever and brand the publication itself and can be used a fodder for people claiming the publication is biased. But if music journalists take the time to put care and authenticity and accurate reporting into their work problems like that can be avoided – or at least minimized.

@Wilbur_Hoffman