What is the only thing that could be more exciting than this year's Grammy Awards? An infographic about the Grammy Awards, of course! Before we see them rock the red carpet, we wanted to see how the biggest names in music size up against each other in terms of their social reach. (more...)

Music and social media form the perfect union. In fact, music has overtaken social media. This isn’t really a bold statement like Nas claiming, “Hip hop is dead,” it’s just a statement of fact. Music has moved its residence, and it now lives on the internet, visiting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube millions of times every second.  CDs and record stores have been pushed aside to make room for their digital counterparts, iPods and iTunes.   Social media has become a musical voice for artists everywhere, a place where musicians can promote, explain, think out loud, and where @KanyeWest can show us how much jewelry he’s currently wearing at the airport (it's just too easy to make fun of Kanye).   Here at Activ8Social, social media is our specialty, and if you haven’t noticed from our work page, we work with over a dozen premier athletes. We wake up every day excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with and promote people who possess such rare talent, but music is the old person on the block and sometimes you need to respect your elders.     Red Bull athletes such as Reggie Bush and Rajon Rondo boast 1,861,577 and 316,197 followers on Twitter  respectively. The leading athlete in the world on Twitter is Real Madrid soccer player Kaka, who has 5,197,005 people receiving his tweets. This seems monumental before comparing these athletes to leading musicians like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. Gaga has 12,221,602 followers while the Biebs clocks in at 11,470,937. Let's recap that: artist champ Gaga = 12 million plus vs. athlete champ Kaka = 5 million plus.   Looking at the Top 100 lists of most popular Twitter accounts, 5 of the top 10 has gained their fame through music. Kaka is the top athlete on the list at #17 in the world.   Twitter is clearly not the only way to measure social media reach, but the statistics for Facebook aren’t much different. Eminem has 44,310,409 likes, while the most popular athlete is Cristiano Ronaldo with 31,733,890 likes. The top 15 features six artists and only one athlete.   Perhaps a more appropriate comparison is Klout, which measures online influence. Justin Bieber scored a 100 for his Klout score. No you didn’t read that wrong—Bieber scored a 100 out of 100, making him the most influential person online (according to Klout).  

Innovation moves quickly online. The digital revolution all began with a man named Sean Parker (you should recognize him from The Social Network, the now famous movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg) and not so long ago a social network called MySpace reigned supreme above all other social networking web sites.   Artists such as Lily Allen, OneRepublic, and Sean Kingston were all discovered through MySpace which lead the website to launch their own label: MySpace Music. Then along came YouTube, Facebook Pages, ReverbNation, OurStage, and more. Today, social media success is measured by much more than one.   Below you will find 6 artists and bands who we believe have changed the course of their career forever (whether breaking into the industry or late stage) through social media.

1. Lady Gaga • @ladygaga • Facebook • YouTube • MySpace

  Find a balance between promotion and authenticity...   We just couldn’t leave Lady Gaga off this list. She leads so many social media categories she has to be doing something right. In the beginning, Gaga worked with ThinkTank Digital, reaching out to different blogs agreeing to over 50 interviews. This started the buzz that can be seen everywhere today. Much of her early focus was on MySpace. It was the place where all her fans gathered, and therefore the outlet she first distributed  her exclusive content. At some point in 2009, Team Gaga switched focus to Facebook and Twitter.   Her ThinkTank team attributed much of her Twitter success to its authenticity. “Twitter she did handle herself, because actually at that time she made it clear that she wanted to be the one to tweet,” said Elshahawi from ThinkTank Digital. The focus has now changed to keeping a balance between promotion and authenticity.   Now she has over 12 million fans on Twitter, 42 million likes on Facebook, and 1.9 billion YouTube views. What ultimately makes Lady Gaga so popular? That’s debatable but one thing is clear—Gaga uses social media to amplify the sensational nature of her original video content and everyday personality.

 

2. U2 • Facebook • YouTube • MySpace

Invite the world to your concert...   In late 2009, U2 streamed their concert live on YouTube from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. Everyone with an internet connection could watch. Initial reports surfaced that over 100 thousand people streamed live. However, when the final numbers were discovered over 10 million people watched. At the time it set a new record for largest streaming audience.  

They are paving the way for live concerts everywhere to become more social. It all started with the hashtag #U2360MON. People tweeted about the playlists, guest appearances, and "the claw" all using the hashtag. These tweets retweeted all around the world trending in Canada and the U.K.   The group also allows people to tag themselves in the crowd, and send the photo to Facebook to pop up in your friend’s newsfeeds. The concert positions a huge Gigapixel camera that can see every single person in the crowd. The camera zooms in finding one person in the gigantic crowd without losing much quality.

Can’t get tickets to U2? It might not be a problem using YouTube. They’ve turned their concert social media friendly, now if only Bono could get a twitter.   Check out our U2 article in this week's edition of Monday's #SoMash.  

3. Lil Wayne • @LilTunechi • Facebook • Youtube • Myspace

"iPod, iChat, iPhone, iPad...............i love." -LilTunechi   Wayne has said that he is music. Music is turning into social media. So… Lil Wayne is social media? No. However, he is still considered by many as the best rapper alive.   He is a driving force behind record label Young Money and has been responsible for some of the most inspiring hip-hop we’ve heard in years. He has almost 30 million likes on Facebook and 2.7 million followers on Twitter. He could be on this list simply because of his mixtapes. He was one of the first big name rappers to get online and release free music to millions of his begging fans. These mixtapes got blogged and tweeted tens of thousands of times over. His mixtapes Dedication 2 and No Ceilings are recognized as two of the most downloaded and shared mixtapes ever.

  However, Lil Wayne has done more than simply release free mixtapes. In what should be viewed as a smart public relations move, he opened  an official Twitter account before going to prison last year for weapons charges. He then used @LilTunechi to thank his fans and to share heartfelt, inspirational messages before serving his sentence. Since Lil Wayne was  released from jail his Twitter has left much to be desired.

4. OK Go • @okgo • Facebook • YouTube • MySpace

There are a million ways to discover a new audience...   Formed in 98’, OK Go has had a special impact on social media. Having over 500,000 followers on Twitter the band does a good job of keeping fans updated as well as responding to select mentions. Having almost 400,000 likes on Facebook they do a great job keeping fans updated with their concert schedule.   Most impressive about their social media presence was their A Million Ways video on YouTube in 2005. Lacking special effects and over production, the video simply showed the band dancing in a backyard. In August 2006 the video surpassed 9 million downloads making it the most downloaded video ever at the time. This took OK Go to the next level breaking them through to a much larger audience.     We also have to give credit to anyone performing on the Google+ stage.

 

5. Soulja Boy • @SouljaBoy • Facebook • YouTube • MySpace

  Self promotion first, the rest will follow...   The rap industry has changed, and it has become harder and harder to get signed without creating your own buzz and releasing free mixtapes to the public. Emerging rappers must use social media daily before a label even thinks of contacting them. One rapper who made it through the music hustle is Soulja Boy.   Soulja Boy is known for always using his Twitter. Having over 3 million followers he hasn’t always generated positive buzz. He has been in the news for his “Twitter beef” with Fabolous, Bow Wow, and 50 Cent. He created his own YouTube channel and MySpace account before he was signed to a label, and has continued to evolve adding an Ustream tab to his Facebook page, which has almost 6 million likes.     Along with OK Go, Soulja Boy’s big splash happened when he released his music video Crank That (Soulja Boy). The video exploded all over YouTube becoming one of the most remixed videos ranging from Sponge Bob to The Simpsons “cranking that.” It appeared on HBO’s Entourage in 2007 eventually being named the 23^rd most successful song of the 2000s by Billboard in 2009. The dance spread nation wide and is still performed all over today, while the video has surpassed 100 million views.

6. E-dubble • @EdubHipHop • Facebook • YouTube

Passion can take you anywhere...   We simply couldn't resist shouting out artists that stand out as social media stars without mentioning an A8S client and team favorite, e-dubble. Although he is still up and coming compared to the likes of U2 and Gaga, his passion for creative lyrics and wide ranging samples is impressive and inspires thousands of fans to positively comment on his music.   In early December 2009, e-dubble, better known to many as edub (real name Evan Wallace), released his debut album Hip Hop Is Good which was written, recorded, and self produced at his home studio in Baltimore, MD.

Following his album release in an attempt to build his brand and develop his own sound, edub embarked on an aggressive mission to release a free song via Facebook every Friday for one entire calendar year, dubbed "Freesyle Friday". It’s important to note that edub's Freestyle Friday pre-dated Kanye West's free GOOD Friday songs released only online.

 

  Despite broken computer fans, snowpocalypses, family emergencies, and that little thing called a job, edub not only managed to meet his lofty promise of 52 free songs but even released a 53rd free song called "Robots Can't Drink" in which he brought the series full circle by sampling his own song "Robots Pop Songs."  This display of dedication demonstrates what it takes to establish a sustainable career in the industry.   Leveraging free social media music services like ReverbNation, Songcloud, and OurStage, edub has amassed over 1,000,000 streams and 200,000 downloads. On the strength of his free music downloads, ebub’s studio album is now available on music discovery services like Pandora, Last.fm, and Jango.   He runs his own Twitter account replying to every single fan that compliments his music or inquires about a particularly intriguing lyric. His Facebook Page has steadily grown, recently surpassing 12,000 fans. Equally as impressive and representative of social media’s “networked” effect, edub’s YouTube channel is experiencing over 10,000 views and 125 new subscribers daily, all with no official music videos or professional production.   Perhaps most exciting of all, star comedian Aziz Ansari contacted edub to use his track, “Hampden Parks,” on the popular NBC show Parks & Rec. Check out the video below to see his song on NBC’s new promo video.     Conclusion   Music and social media are starting to become one. There’s no doubt that digital distribution and online influence are vital tools to the industry. We leave you with a quote from Joe Sparrow of anewbandaday.com, which we think thinks sums up music and social media well:  

 “All bands I deal with now, even the very small new ones, milk social media for all it's worth, because they can connect directly to their audience. But no one social media stream - Twitter, Facebook, etc - will make or break them, it's more of a gradual increasing of their presence.”