How do I use social media?

[HREQ]

I'm legit not interested in anyone or anything on social media, all attempts at following or engaging others feels fake. Only reason I want to use it is to advertise my own music, best way I see is to follow lots of ppl who are into the genre I like and hope they see my tweet / follow back, but it feels fake as heck doing that. I want to be one of those accounts with 100k followers and only following 3 people lol...

Should I start over on social media, and just post my stuff and thats it? How the frick will it ever get discovered??? Who should I follow?? Why should I follow?

if I decide to follow bands or artists I like, I'd easily follow like 500 ppl, and none would follow me back LMAO but what's the point? I'm not using twitter to keep up with them, I just want to post my songs on there, so maybe I should just be like following nobody? but then I look like a jerk wouldnt I? lol

[eLawnMust]

I don't do any social media... Also I make tunes I wanna listen to because that's all that matters. Who gives a crap about others on the net 'listening'? How do you know any are really real?...What would it matter anyway?

Had a soundcloud free account for years but a year ago they started requiring 'email verification' for uploading. So I said 'delete my account & all my stuff' & they asked for confirm, I said YES!... They said 'OK account queued for deletion'. That was a year ago it's all still up so rubbing on my face & a bit of theft as well...

Luckily no 'good stuff' as I never put the best online ever, too easy to be stolen...

There's TONS of tunes everywhere for free & many people selling for pennies... People out there are bored with the mass of it. The time to do what you wanna do is over 20 years ago...

Make what YOU wanna listen to & forget the internet & artificial listeners just for what?... A dopamine hit? The internet is a boiling toilet....

[cryophonik]

I have to admit, I'm terrible at using social media for music, but I've made extensive use of it for our photography side gig and we built up 60K+ followers on Instagram. We gained the majority of those followers before COVID and actually got up to over 70K followers, but it has gone down since then due to Instagram removing bots/fake followers and my loss of interest and time in posting regularly. The two things you need to know about Instagram above everything else are: (1) you only get out of it what you put into it, so be prepared to spend a LOT of time following, commenting, etc. on other people's accounts if you want to get anything in return, and (2) the algorithm no longer favors you and it's VERY difficult to get a huge following unless you're a young attractive person doing the influencer thing and making stupid reels on a (literally) daily basis. I can't speak for TikTok, except to say that it might be a better option these days than Instagram. Your best bet is probably to have your music available on multiple platforms (e.g., Soundcloud, Apple, Spotify, YouTube), promote yourself across all the social media platforms, and live with your phone in your hand. Otherwise, the reality is that you'll be lucky to gain more than a few hundred followers at best.

[FranklyFlawless]

Should I start over on social media, and just post my stuff and thats it? How the frick will it ever get discovered??? Who should I follow?? Why should I follow?

if I decide to follow bands or artists I like, I'd easily follow like 500 ppl, and none would follow me back LMAO but what's the point? I'm not using twitter to keep up with them, I just want to post my songs on there, so maybe I should just be like following nobody? but then I look like a jerk wouldnt I?

Up to you, so take some time to contemplate.

[SampleScience]

If you don't want to participate in other conversations, advertising is the only way to go. They are social media, and the only way to have some level of success with them is to socialize and give useful/insightful feedback. I'm not really into them, but over the years, I've gathered a 1K following on X (Twitter) and Facebook. My Instagram doesn't have that much because it has been hacked, and I had to create a new one.

[BertKoor]

I want to be one of those accounts with 100k followers and only following 3 people lol...

Keep on dreaming... This won't ever happen automagically, you have to put in some effort & energy.

But lets start with some basics. Do you have anything of value to share there?
If not, that's not really an impediment... if you are prepared to sell your soul. Do you want to be part of the Kardashian economy? In other words: having followers just for the sake of having followers and monetise them bastards.

If you don't have anything to share, and it sounds like you're not prepared to sell your soul, then my advice is to let go of that dream and stay away from social media. It's clearly not your thing.

If you have something to share, you could let someone else that's better at it handle your social media.

I don't dare to ask whether you have decided on your moniker yet...

[HREQ]

>I don't dare to ask whether you have decided on your moniker yet...

...almost...........

[harryupbabble]

how do i use social media?
well, is kvr audio one?
it is?
okay well, i log on
and type crap
it's really easy

[harryupbabble]

i used ro use youtube
but then i realized...
if my songs sucks in my opinion then
i shouldn`t even be exposing them on social media

when my songs don`t suck is the time to use social media
but my songs may never not suck

it`s freaking hard to write songs that don`t suck, okay?
but methinks it`s not impossible to write at least one song that don`t suck

but first...
one just has to write one thousand songs that sucks
there`s no need to expose one thousand sucky songs though?

[mm10]

I totally get the whole "feels fake" vibe, trying to play the social media game just to get noticed can feel like selling your soul a bit. But if you're not into engaging and still want visibility, one practical route is just running paid promo. Skip the follow-for-follow circus.

If you're only looking to promote your music without doing the daily grind of interacting, I'd recommend something like DNOXSMM, a tool to boost reach without all the fake energy. It can help get your posts seen by more of the right crowd, especially if you're targeting niche genre listeners.

You don't need to be "Mr. 100K followers following nobody" on day one. Just be consistent, drop your music, and let tools and promo do the heavy lifting if you're not about the social side. No shame in that.

[h66]

Don't use social media, ever! KVR and other forums are not social media! Social media is curated and creates a new reality. It's not the reality that's good for you.

[eLawnMust]

Piss on social media... Who has time for that garbage?... Your time would be better spent beating off in a corner...

[bulevardi]

Had a soundcloud free account for years but a year ago they started requiring 'email verification' for uploading. So I said 'delete my account & all my stuff' & they asked for confirm, I said YES!... They said 'OK account queued for deletion'. That was a year ago it's all still up so rubbing on my face & a bit of theft as well...

How did you get signed up for a free account without giving up your e-mail address in the first place?
I'm on SoundCloud aswel, free account since around 10 years ago.
I'm not sure I would have been able to make an account without e-mail ... for most services or accounts you want to create anywhere on the internet, you need to sign up with at least "something".
Sometimes you have options, that you can sign in with a Google or FB account instead.

How did you sign up here on KVR forums, also without e-mail address?
Did it feel of theft?

[bulevardi]

The two things you need to know about Instagram above everything else are: (1) you only get out of it what you put into it, so be prepared to spend a LOT of time following, commenting, etc. on other people's accounts if you want to get anything in return, and (2) the algorithm no longer favors you and it's VERY difficult to get a huge following unless you're a young attractive person doing the influencer thing and making stupid reels on a (literally) daily basis. I can't speak for TikTok, except to say that it might be a better option these days than Instagram.

I don't find TikTok to be a better option.
I personally think it's worse. I tested this route to promote stuff in the past 2 years, but wasn't active enough on that.

I started with IG 10 years ago because of my photography hobby.
I didn't need thousands or millions of followers as goal, I just wanted to get in touch with other fellow sharing the same hobbies, to discuss and connect things, meet and colab,...
It did work good in the first years, I met some interesting people due to that.
But aside that, I spent enormous time in it. You can only get something out of it if you put something in, as you explained.

IG is doing a tiktokification right now, last years they pushed photography aside and reward people who do video, giving a higher reach to people posting reels instead of photos.
IG changed their policy against fake news factchecking, hate,...
IG changed their grid layout (not for all accounts it seems, it's random), and their workaround only works 'sometimes'. For this reason, my whole personalised 1:1 layout got ruined.
Tried alternatives, tried Pixelfed, Bluesky/Mastodon and other media, but not my cup of tea.
(Bluesky will launch an alternative to IG pretty soon, called Flashes, but currently only available for iPhone, not yet on Android).

I happened to notice that I had around 6K followers, and 80% of them were not active anymore... since 2019 or so. I started to clean up, unfollow people, too time consuming, I ended up deleting my account, forever.
(I made a spare account before I did that, following only a small amount of people I did care about from the last years, just to stay connected with them, but I deleted the app on my phone, perhaps I reinstall a couple of times a year to see important messages from them, or to upload something exceptional.)

What bothers me on IG is that every 2 posts I see an advertisement or promoted post.
I see too much influencers posting zillions of times video content about their superficial lives, videos about how they prepare their next video, unboxing the stuff they buy, ... If you go offline for 6 months and come back, you see them post exactly the same things.
Sometimes FOMO itches when I'm offline, but then I know: I'm actually not missing a damn thing here... Real life happens offline.

There's much to say about all this above, I could go on and on... but currently reading the book "Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport. It has very interesting insights.
Next will be the book "Dopamine Nation".
Social Media really works too compulsive and addictive (for me) and time consuming.
I'll try to spend more time in learning craft and creating music,... but then when finished, I need to spread it to the outside world, via Social Media again?
I'm more a studio guy, not a live gig player.

[Michael L]

Early music youtuber Andrew Huang wrote a book about his experience including lots of income piecharts. Most of his money came from using youtube to market his skills to commercial clients.