Social Media hype kils what it creates

Thoughtful article that should be read in full - a very clear take on social networking for musicians.

I was most taken with the analogy to parents naming children who chose not to pick names that rose quickly to prominence as they dismissed them as a fad. Apparently, research shows that people have a similar attitude to music.

Similar to the way that parents shied away from overly popularized first names, the more rapidly popularized that an artist becomes, the more fans perceive them negatively, avoid buying their albums, and file-share the short-lived songs instead.

The more fans do this, the more labels are forced to create music that can go viral and become blockbusters instantly, and the faster new artists are blitzed into the mix, feeding into an ever more vicious cycle that kills what it creates. 

Read the whole piece here - it's well worth it.