Artists are constantly being told to tweet. And tweet. And tweet… just to stay connected with their fans and stay relevant. But is that the best advice, especially when it comes to selling stuff (like albums)? The answer is not for every artist, especially for those courting a less mainstream, more music-focused crowd. Even worse, it could be stealing valuable time away from songwriting, gigging, collaborating, and other pursuits that form deeper audience connections.
To test the idea, we took a look at the best-selling albums of the year so far, as counted by Nielsen Soundscan. Then, we mapped those to the Twitter rankings of the recording artists themselves, as tracked by BigChampagne.
The results were interesting. For artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, this is arguably part of a broader mainstream marketing blitz, though even that equation recently broke down for top-ranked Twitterer Soulja Boy (as aptly shown by Billboard last year). For others outside of mainstream pop that are breaking through, constant Twittering frankly seems like a waste of time.
Comments Closed
Dirk Tuesday, July 12, 2011
I think this article misses the point. A post which reads, "hey, my music is for sale" isn't going to have nearly the effect of something like, "hey, for my twitter followers, today only you can get my album/t-shirt/unreleased-track for free/discount/$5-off."
J Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Agreed - this article is irrlevant, just like album sales for most artists. Maintaining a consistent dialogue with fans through twitter keeps them informed and interested about much more than selling albums, and gets people out to the live show - where so many artists actually make their money today.
Maxwellian Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Twitter all you want, it doesn't make good music and I never liked a band because of Twitter.
::MW
@naganicol Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Nathaly Garcia
Si twitter vendiera discos...
@barbara_DE Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Barbara
Yes if only...interesting..
CTyankee Tuesday, July 12, 2011
You should put Bon Iver on this, only 74,000 Twitter followers.
@pinkygonzales Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Pinky Gonzales
Interesting contrast...
@rokenbk97 Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Patrick McGinn
No Twitter account for Mumford and Sons?
Jessica Tuesday, July 12, 2011
I don't follow my favorite artists on Twitter, except maybe a handful. There's nothing worse than when someone is on break, and they have nothing better to do, so they go on Twitter to hang out for awhile. You get a lot of crazy thoughts, little too much information, and just filler. They tweet as if they're the only person you're following. I've seen people like George Michael and Justin Timberlake do that.
I don't like the artists who use Twitter to push out hashtags either... You know, the ones who say "Let's go! #albumtitle" and then proceed to RT every single tweet with it to their timeline. It's a waste of their time and mine. All they're working for is being blocked/reported as spam.
And if they stopped trying to be our friends, they'd probably sell more records.
As for Soulja Boy, he's no longer a big shot in this business. I doubt most of his 2M followers even still see him as an artist. A lot of them are hacked accounts, people signing up then leaving, and junk anyway. That's after looking at his account through ReFollow: Out of 3,000 users, only 1,000 are tweeting. So that's only 1/3 which could easily be 1/2 if you looked deeper.
Chris Ruen Tuesday, July 12, 2011
I think Twitter has the potential to be helpful to artists of all kinds, but probably only at the margins. Most people who are popular on Twitter have a big machine/or press hype behind them already, driving up online interest. Twitter is certainly not the answer to artistic success. I may be misunderstanding the method here, but it would be interesting to check the artist ranks a month before the relevant album had come out and test for the same correlation/causation.
@thedailyswarm Tuesday, July 12, 2011
The Daily Swarm
If you don't need it, it works great
@Sonicbids Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sonicbids
Twitter may not guarantee album sales, but can establish valuable ties to your fans which can mean profit. Thoughts?
@oliviercastanet Tuesday, July 12, 2011
olivier castanet
A lire "If Only Twitter Could Sell Albums..."
@ericbeverly Tuesday, July 12, 2011
eric beverly
Shocker. Making good music still matters...
@kbreuner Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Kevin Breuner
I can't believe Digital Music News posted an article with such a short sighted view of Twitter and music promotion.
@cibele_ADORA_RM Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Cibele
Bueno para algunos, no tanto para otros...
@BrianDKarr Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Brian Karr
No, twitter alone doesn't sell albums. But it doesn't hurt.
Travis Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Or you can look at the top ten sellers and see 2 have no twitter accounts, and one is top 500. The other 7 topsellers' twitter rankings are 2 in top 70, 2 in top 30, 1 in the top 20, and 3 in the top 5 ranked twitter spots including spots #1 & #2.
Maybe there IS something to correlate.
G. la Belles-Lettre Wednesday, July 13, 2011
I think what the article points out is what the data shows. Twitter's been around for a while now. It's no longer about whether twitter "can" or "has the potential to" drive record and ticket sales. Does anyone have a contray example of an artist outside of th uber-famous who has a huge twitter presence AND respectable album or ticket sales? If you know of are in such a band, please post the numbers.
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