Facebook currently is a good tool for music promotion and interacting with listeners, but it may not be so forever. Usage in the US is declining since last year, and static in the U.K.
Research shows that the number of unique visitors to the Facebook website from computers, smartphones and tablets has fallen from 153m in March 2012 to 142m in March this year, having peaked at 158m last August. – The Guardian
A good portion of the users lost may be young people, particularly teens. It seems one main reason for this is that parental units and other un-cool family members are also on Facebook! Facebook as an exclusive place for young, techy people in the know, as it was five or so years ago, no longer exists. Sharing things your parents may not approve of requires carefully navigating privacy settings for each post, plus it’s just plain not cool that your parents are on there anyway! Kids may have accounts, but they aren’t very active users.
They’ve moved on to networks like Instagram and Tumblr. These are newer networks that parents haven’t yet adopted and are likely a bit more obtuse to figure out for less savvy older folks.
Teens seem to be the segment that is abandoning Facebook the fastest, but who cares?
You’re trying to make a profit with your music somehow, right? Teens don’t have much money. They probably pirate like crazy and don’t buy your stuff.
However, they will soon be college students and twenty-somethings with income. If you’re in this for the long-haul, they can be valuable fans down the road. Toyota, when it realized their cars were beginning to only be bought by older and older customers and were considered boring among younger people, decided to create the Scion brand of funkier cars aimed at a younger audience to re-capture the younger drivers and build brand loyalty with a younger generation.
It is important to keep up with where your audience is going. EDM music is primarily powered by a younger crowd at the moment, so it is doubly important for us to stay on top of the hot social media trends.
The long-term viability of all social networks is of concern to me, which is one reason I advocate for always harvesting emails. Email is not going anywhere anytime soon, making your email list a much more evergreen source of contacts with fans.
Facebook probably won’t be around forever, but I doubt it will go poof in the near-term. It is still definitely a viable place for promoting our music, however I’d suggest thinking about how hard you want to focus your time (and money, if you pay to promote your page or posts) on a social network that may be at the beginning of its downswing.
EDM producers are likely the prime audience for free plugins. Always looking to find a new and unique sound, experimental and niche software can be great for producers to tinker with and explore without laying down cash for the privilege. VSTs let you expand the capabilities of your DAW, providing new sounds and effects, and getting them for free can be wonderful. However, there are reasons you may want to stay away from or limit your use of free plugins and stick with a lean and mean team of professionally developed and supported plugs.
In the following article, I’ll outline my business plan, what went wrong, and what I learned. I’m not sure how much of it will be relevant to my readership, as I don’t think everyone is trying to build a label business, and if they were, they probably aren’t doing it the way I did, but I think there are some overall lessons to be learned here. A lot of the best lessons are learned from failure, so please let my misguided attempt educate you at least at what NOT to do, and what NOT to do with your own music.