Are taste makers changing the game in music artist marketing?

Everyone loves finding new music. Its a constant routine: a new song comes on the radio, Billboard top 100 has a new winner, your Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify gives you a few gems, or E! News is talking about Justin Bieber's newest single. We like to take claim for our newest finds in hopes that our friends will love them too; it is always the best compliment when someone thinks you have a great taste in music.

But how do these songs make Sirius XM's Top 20? Can we really take credit for finding the diamond in the rough when it comes to music?

Record labels have power through marketing agency's to promote the new music they are about to publish. This can be an outside resource, in-house, or (if one of the big three record labels) a marketing subsidiary that the record label owns. I don't want to get into the traditional forms of marketing that these agency's and the artists' team does to promote their new pieces of work. Instead I want to dive into the creative tool of using tastemakers.

Taste makers are a key part in stimulating buzz around an artists' new releases. Here is its' definition:

taste·mak·er

ˈtāstˌmākər/

noun

1. a person who decides or influences what is or will become fashionable.

When we apply this to the music industry, marketing agency's can hold special relationships with social media icons so that they include new music in their posts. A tastemaker does not need to be in the music industry; they can be social media famous from posting workout videos, makeup tutorials, vlog posts, compilation videos, a popular tumblr. page, and more.

One of my personal favorite tastemakers is @chrisspy. She makes videos on Instagram and YouTube of makeup tutorials with a song playing while she applies new makeup looks and brands. On the surface it seems as though the true plug is the make up that she is using in her look, when in reality it's the song playing. The video is most usually in fast forward and she spend no time actually speaking, the only audio is a song of which credit is given in the comment section.

I personally have found several songs through tastemakers. It's a subtle marketing tool but it is efficient enough to peak my interest into further looking up the song on Spotify. I wouldn't be surprised if majority of millennials have found a song or two through this kind of platform without realizing that this song was picked for them by a record label.

I am curious to know what others think of this tool as it is subtle enough to feel like an organic way to find new music, but in reality it is fed to us like any other music platform. Personally, I don't find this method intrusive at all as I love listing to new music, no matter how I find them or who may have "picked them for me". The purpose of music should be to find pieces that make you feel good and you like, pretending to like a track just because you can claim that "you found it first" goes against the purpose of music in the first place. I even follow a monster truck account because the account includes really unique country music pieces that I have never heard before.

So before you keep scrolling through you Instagram feed at lightspeed, stop and take a listen, because you may like what you hear.

XO. Live Musically.