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“JUST FINISHED MY FIRST SONGWRITING SESSION AND LET ME TELL YOU… A BOP IS IN THE WORKS” tweets James Charles, a social media influencer with over 17 Million YouTube Subscribers. Putting out music has become a natural step in an influencer’s career progression, especially when it comes to YouTubers. 2017 was a big year for “YouTuber diss tracks” and I believe what started as a joke ended up becoming a serious source of revenue for these influencers that they aren’t quite willing to give up on, no matter how horrendous the music might sound or how much backlash they receive on such tracks. But the most interesting aspect of this situation lies in the analytics. Gabbie Hanna, the YouTuber Musician who presumably receives the most criticism for her music among the bunch has over 600,000 Spotify Monthly listeners along with 34 Million streams on her most popular track “Out Loud” and needless to say, those numbers are not bad at all. And it’s not just her, that’s the case with almost all such influencers. With the help of talented producers, sound engineers, and ghostwriters, they are able to make the track sound decent enough for the regular folks but to their young naive dedicated audience, it sounds like a “bop”. Don’t take this the wrong way, some influencers who do music are actually talented, case in point, TMG, a rap duo comprising of two popular youtube stars, Noel Miller and Cody Ko have over 4 Million Spotify Listeners and recently signed a record deal with Arista Records. Joji, who previously used to go by the name “Filthy Frank” on YouTube is another great example.

But bad music or good, these influencers always manage to pull in the streams and I believe they have a couple of forces that work in their favour -

Superfans — A dedicated audience that will engage with your content in all ways possible, something that these influencers have spent years gathering. No matter if they enjoy the track or not, these superfans will go out of their way to make sure they are helping the influencer get more streams.

A dedicated audience that will engage with your content in all ways possible, something that these influencers have spent years gathering. No matter if they enjoy the track or not, these superfans will go out of their way to make sure they are helping the influencer get more streams. Dominating the Spotify Algorithm — The number of pre-saves received and early positive engagement on a track are two good reasons for the Spotify algorithm to push the song to more and more people. And once again, they have the superfans working to get them that early traction.

— The number of pre-saves received and early positive engagement on a track are two good reasons for the Spotify algorithm to push the song to more and more people. And once again, they have the superfans working to get them that early traction. It’s about the brand, not the music -

“You know my first week looking crazy due to high demand,

’Cause people don’t buy music in this day and age,

they buy the brand”

- 44 Bars, Logic

One of the things that these influencers are amazing at is establishing and sticking with the core pillars of thier brand image no matter what they do which makes it easier for their audience to relate to it and perceive it as a genuine effort rather than a blatant play for money.

Establishing a strong & clear brand image and allowing your dedicated audience to engage with it is something that the UK based Music Marketing Agency, Bustimo claims to be very important. They believe “Content is king” and a musician essentially needs to be an influencer first and musician second when it comes to their social media presence.

The power of influencers to drive music sales and streams is so powerful that it can’t be ignored anymore and even the major labels are taking notice at this point. The most recent and stunning example to sum up this article would be Lil Pump’s collaboration with YouTube megastars, Dobre Brothers which was followed by a collaboration between British YouTuber KSI and rappers Lil Pump, and Smokepurpp. Both of the tracks ended up on the trending page on YouTube.

Another example that deserves a special mention is — Twitch Streamer, Ninja’s music compilation Ninjawerks Vol. 1 which had literally zero musical contribution from the streamer himself.

To sum it up, influencers are going to make up a big part of the mainstream music landscape in the near future and I speculate that it might help the struggling music industry recover but on the downside, it might lead to an increase in the prevalence of controversial 360-degree record deals.