Fame from a Feed: How Social Media has Changed Music
There is no denying that in 2026, social media is rapidly shifting from an entertainment-only app to an effective way to help artist's promote and share music. A new way to measure popularity - not streams, not sales, but views. Take platforms like Youtube or TikTok, which have become the main way of listening to music for many. Platforms like these get flooded with millions that attempt to get content monetised, and this in turn leads to big artist's doing the same, but from strictly clean, verified, accounts with a team of professionals paid to market said celebrity, rather than from an unknown person's disorganised profile, trying to promote music without any team behind them. But what about when 'unknown' person's music, goes viral? Singer's such as Justin Bieber or Shawn Mendes have all not only been 'discovered' by labels through Youtube, but rose to fame at a time when this app was becoming the main way to help share artist's music. However, this was still during a time when signing with label was seen as the only way to turn talent into fame, and reality talent show's were still extremely popular, seen as a chance to 'win' a ticket to fame by becoming associated with monoculture and celebrities. In the early 2020's, social media, not just including Youtube, had gotten to a point where it was embedded in most people's daily lives - Many used these app's to promote their businesses, job offerings, and even personally made music. TikTok is an example of an app that revolves or heavily includes music and soundtracks, which is used by many to share personal music compositions, such as song mashups, remixes, song covers, and self-made song's. Although few self-made song's have managed to make the jump from popularity on the app they were originally posted on too significant fame and topping Spotify charts, some song's from artist's such as Doja cat or Sombr and Lil Nas X have succeeded in this. In fact, the argument could be made that social media becoming more and more essential to the average person's daily life in the 2020's has contributed to the decline of monoculture. This decline in established celebrities relevance result's in people who post music without marketing teams or labels going viral simply for the art itself, and not the marketing or celebrity status behind it. As the public begin to notice the corruption of certain labels and music management companies, a push is slowly being made towards artist's being entirely self-made, with more and more song's becoming popular with no previous correlation to the person that created the song. In a way, this mirrors the increased popularity of music video's in the 80's, which eventually led to a decline in popularity of the radio. The reason many major artist's from the 80's and onward succeeded was because they adapted to such changes. In summary, the video killed the radio star, but it can be said the internet killed the label corruption.
Sources Cited:
- https://www.ifpi.org/global-music-report-2026-global-recorded-music-revenues-grow-6-4-as-record-companies-drive-innovation/
- https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/
- https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/12/11/teens-social-media-and-technology-2023/