In today’s world, social media is constantly evolving. New social platforms and tools to promote music can really keep us on our toes! We wanted to share a few standout platforms that we have our eyes on in the new year.
Platforms to try in 2023:
- BeReal
- Discord
- Stationhead
- Lemon8
We can’t talk about important platforms in 2023 without talking about the Gen Z phenomenon that is BeReal. This app has been downloaded 28 million times and has 21 million active monthly users as of September 2022.
This platform leans on raw and unfiltered content. Some say it is a product of the younger generation craving the more genuine connections over filtered content focused on entertainment.
How Does it work?
When thinking of BeReal, think of in-the-moment experiences. All users receive a notification with the opportunity to post once a day. They never know what time of the day this notification will be sent, just that everyone will receive it at the same time. Users then have 2 minutes to capture two photos of what they are doing at that moment; one photo from the front-facing camera (ideally a selfie) and the other from the back-facing camera (showing your setting). Once posted, you are able to view your friends’ content to see what they were doing at the same time. You are only able to view content from friends that day if you also share a post.
Note: technically you can post after the two-minute allotted time if you miss the notification but your post will then include how long after the notification your photo was taken.
RealMoji
The RealMoji is a spin on the typical emoji reactions, except this is a photo of your own face! Make a face to react to your friends’ content. This is especially exciting when fans get a RealMoji from one of their favorite artists.
Memories
Memories allow you to get a calendar view of each BeReal moment you have captured each day. While friends can only see your content for 24hrs, you can go back and save any of your photos and cross-promote to other socials!
Discovery
The discovery tab on BeReal allows users to see content outside of their own friends! Make your BeReal’s public facing so people can discover your content and follow along for more.
Tools & Tips:
Top Fans
Utilize BeReal as a place for top fans to get sneak peeks into upcoming releases, tours, merch, and and hint at big announcements before they are announced!
Share this account with top fans via DMs, email lists, or even at shows. This can become a place artists can really create a community by reacting to fans in real-time and giving them a sneak peek into everyday life.
Tour Content
Fans love seeing what artists get up to when on tour. Showcase which city in the world you are in through a BeReal moment. Ask fans to guess the location or the context based on what you are doing at that moment.
Multiple Members
What do you do if you have multiple members in your band or group and you are not together? Rotate the BeReal responsibility between members by dedicating certain days or weeks per member. Fans will be excited to see you switch it up!
Remember
✓ Keep notifications on so you get the alert to post every day
✓ Turn your location off
✓ Engage with your fans on the platform
With over 150 million people actively using Discord each month in 2022, this platform has quickly become a valuable place to build a community among musicians and fans. The focus of this platform is to create conversations around specific topics and ideas. Artists get to jump into conversations in real-time with their fans, creating an irreplaceable bond between them.
On other platforms, it can be hard to break an algorithm and get your content seen. With Discord, this platform cuts through those extra steps and allows artists and fans to speak directly with each other.
How does it work?
Once a user has joined the platform, they are able to join various online communities, known on this platform as Servers. Artists will want to join communities, but more importantly, they will want to create them! Do this by going to Server Settings → Community to set up a designated community server. From here, many features will become available to use within the community!
Set-Up:
Welcome screen: Explain why you created this community and what you hope fans will get out of this experience. Then, explain the various channels within the server so fans know which to follow along with.
Announcement channels: This is a place for shameless promotion! Share all announcements with your fans here. Create a countdown to a big announcement and have people guess within this space what it will be.
Stage Channels: these are voice channels that up to 1000 fans can join to listen and/or participate in. This is also a great opportunity to have guests on!
Rules screening: Create a set of rules your community agrees to follow before they can enter. Make up your own or use the suggestions Discord provides.
Roles: one of the most unique features on Discord! You can set up rules for any users within your community. This is often used within the NFT space so that anyone that proves they own an artist’s NFT will get assigned a special rule. These rules can allow users to have first access to events, concerts, first listens etc. Another way to utilize rules is to assign the early adopters to rewards for being fans from the beginning!
Tools & Tips:
Spotify Listening Parties
Link your Spotify account to your Discord profile. Once that is set up, you can host listening parties by inviting fans to listen along with you. Have a dedicated channel for this within discord to alert fans when the artist is hosting, and allow fans to host their own listening parties. Learn more here.
Special Guests
Bring people in via guest chats with the artist. This will incentivize new audiences to join the discord as well as offer a conversation that will not be heard anywhere else!
Game Nights
Get your fanbase together virtually via discord’s voice chat channel game nights. The platform has various games that can be played. Choose different games on a consistent basis, or ask fans to vote on the games they want to play!
Watch Together
Discord recently released their Watch Together activity allowing communities to play YouTube videos and watch these together! Play your music videos and get feedback from fans. You can even play some of your favorite tracks and videos via YouTube to showcase inspiration around an upcoming release.
Contest
Get people into your discord community and participating by running contests. Ask fans to enter by uploading the entry to your discord channel and vote for your favorites.
Question of The Day
It is important to keep the community on discord active and entertained. Have a channel dedicated to a question of the day which fans keep coming back to. There are many bots that are available to run these questions every day.
Check out more tips from Discord here.
Stationhead is a radio app where artists and/or fans can start their own channels to go live, stream music, and host radio shows. This app has driven over 100 million additional streams for artists, with some of the biggest acts in the world hosting release parties through the platform.
How does it work?
Songs will play in sync for all listeners when they login via their Apple Music or Spotify Premium accounts. The best part is that for every person on the channel listening, it counts for an individual stream. So, encouraging fans to join a listening party can provide a great boost in streaming numbers! These shows are saved so anyone can relisten in their own time and streams still count!
Fans are also able to send tips during these streams and purchase music directly. When Fans purchase the music within the station they are given a “supporter” badge that will be showcased on the chat for all to see.
Looking to get started? Simply download the Stationhead app, connect your Apple Music or Spotify account, choose a username and explore the platform!
To go live: Go to your profile → choose “go on air” → choose a playlist via Apple or Spotify of the songs you would like to showcase during the show → Test microphone → notify all followers → and do not forget to grab the live link to share across all other social platforms!
Find a step-by-step guide for iOS, Android, or web here.
Tools & Tips
Listening Parties
These can be very successful within the app! Artists will be live with fans listening along and having conversations in real time. The artist can walk fans through each track on a record prior to listening and even invite callers to join in by asking questions about the songs.
Stationhead Leaderboard
Encourage fans to band together on the platform with a leaderboard challenge. If fans can get a station playing your music trending on Stationhead’s weekly leaderboard, the artist can release an acoustic version of a popular track, a new single, special edition vinyls etc.
Guest Interviews
Artists interviewing artists! Go live on the platform with artists involved in the making of a new record, or even one that inspired it without any involvement! They can ask each other questions, play music for each other and have conversations with their fans. This will lead to cross promotion on and off the platform.
Don’t forget:
✓ Make a playlist prior to going live.
✓ Share your channel across all socials and push the unique listening link for the live session.
✓ This platform (for now) is audio only.
Artist Fan Channels
Fandoms can create artist fan channels to host their own streaming parties to celebrate an artist’s music! Artists are able to call into these stations if they want to engage directly with their fanbase and thank them for listening. Find case studies here.
Lemon8 is the newest video and photo-sharing social app to rise to the top of the U.S App Store, peaking at No 10 on the Overall Apps chart. While this is still a very new platform, it has already taken off in markets such as Japan and Thailand. Creators around the world are heading to the platform to get ahead of the rush and become an early adopter.
How does it work?
Lemon8 is often referred to as a mix between Instagram and Pinterest. Most content consists of multiple photos or videos that users can swipe left through, similar to an Instagram Carousel post. Unlike other platforms, Lemon8 encourages blog-like captions to coincide with the visual content. Right now, trending topics include lifestyle content such as Beauty, Fashion, Travel, Wellness, Food and Home. These topics are all being highlighted on the user’s “for you” page.
With the easy-to-use product tagging features, there is a major focus on marketing products through this platform. The templates within the platform also make it very easy to add titles to capture users’ attention, and to add descriptions directly to photos.
Tips & Tricks:
Utilize the templates
Post multiple photos and include a title on the first image to encourage fans to swipe left for more. Use the tagging feature to tag anything in photos, especially merch or products associated with a brand you would like to partner with in the future!
Lifestyle focus:
For now, Lemon8 doesn’t have the sound features like other platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels. However, this platform is a great outlet to showcase personality pieces and push product sales related to music (merch, physical products etc.).
This is a great place to showcase your life on the road, BTS of making your record, or even the various inspirations behind your upcoming record. For example, share album covers from artists that inspired your upcoming project and in the caption or directly on the photo using the Lemon8 templates, go into further detail.
Lean in on the aesthetically pleasing content:
This is a great place for those professionally shot photos to live. This platform leans into the artsy, fun, feel-good content.
