Your Favorite Artist Is Probably Starting a Newsletter
Frustrated with the algorithm and the underlying rigidity of social media, musicians are looking for new ways to communicate with the public.
Last June, I published an article about the Instagramification of music discourse, and in the six months that followed, the omnipresent social media platform has arguably only strengthened its stranglehold on the conversation. Well-established publications like Pitchfork and Resident Advisor are increasingly making content that’s exclusive to Instagram, and while they of course do still publish things on their actual websites, it’s often clear that a whole lot of time and effort is also being funneled into crafting “optimized” (read: abbreviated, eye-catching and easily digestible) versions of those very same things for social media.
Outside of the traditional press, Instagram is also home to a growing fleet of music influencers. Folks like margeaux, Derrick Gee, Fish56Octagon and Anthony Fantano are some of the most prominent voices—in fairness, some of them have even larger followings on TikTok and / or YouTube—but they’re not alone. Benn Jordan has become a go-to voice on all things music tech, while RamonPang has parlayed his passion for IDM and bass music into a sizable following. Tia Ho offers her followers an accessible window into young Brooklyn hipsterism, and Jaymie Silk engages in pointed cultural critique of contemporary dance music. Across social media, there are hundreds more of these people, possibly thousands, and that doesn’t even include the glut of politically oriented, often anonymous-run accounts that have sprouted up in recent years. When the conversation around Gaza (and the music industry’s complicity in the conflict) was at its most intense last year, it was these accounts—and not the traditional music press—that most frequently stoked online discussion, and now that a ceasefire is in place, these accounts are some of the only actors still talking about the issue on a regular basis.
In short, Instagram is full of people talking about music, but in the face of that growth, one key problem remains: People increasingly hate social media.
The ubiquity of words like “doomscrolling” and “enshittification” speaks to the misery of our current online existence, and anyone who’s spent even a little time on social media knows that the space is rife with ads, shameless self-promotion, bad-faith actors and conflict-inducing rage bait. It’s unclear how much that’s prompted anyone to actually leave platforms like Instagram behind, but there’s no shortage of stories about Gen Z—who are often skewered as being antisocial, brainrot-addled internet junkies—actively seeking a way out, whether they’re voluntarily deleting apps en masse or simply seeing the ability to be offline as a new kind of luxury.
This leaves artists in a very tricky situation. As audiences have been steadily consolidated onto social media during the past two decades, musicians (along with labels, venues, promoters and pretty much anyone in the industry who’s trying to sell something) have effectively been forced to devote all sorts of time and resources into building an online following. The platforms have shifted over time, but regardless of whether they were working with MySpace and Facebook or Instagram and TikTok, the dynamic has been more or less the same, in the sense that artists, no matter how popular, are not only perpetually subject to the ever-changing whims of the algorithm, but also ultimately have little to no control over the tools they’re using to communicate with the public.
As workers whose livelihood is already precarious to begin with, this is far from ideal, but considering that bookings are now routinely based on follower counts and lowered barriers to entry have made the music landscape more competitive than ever before, most artists feel compelled to play the social media game regardless. In a cultural ecosystem that’s absolutely saturated with content offerings and voices (only some of which are actually creative) loudly pleading for attention, maintaining some level of visibility has become absolutely essential for artists, and those hoping to build or sustain any sort of long-term viability have to find a way to forge a real connection—or at least something that feels like real connection—with the people who actually care about and support their work.
Social media, where the shelf life of even the most successful content is rarely more than a few days, is not a place that’s conducive to real connection, and as the vibes on Instagram and other platforms continue to crater, it’s no wonder that artists are starting to look at other options. What’s more interesting, however, is how many of them have decided that newsletters—and Substack newsletters in particular—are the best way forward.