Column Focus (#49) | Before Selling Artists on Social Media, Protect Them From It. | Music Producer

Nowadays, artist activities and social media have become almost inseparable.

TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X. Writing good songs, releasing them, and performing live. That alone is rarely enough to get discovered. So you post. You make videos. You watch the numbers. You post again.

I believe this is now a part of being an artist.

I personally believe that social media should be used more strategically, and that artists need a sense of digital marketing.

But at the same time, I feel strongly about something.

Before selling artists on social media, we must protect them from social media.

This is an important part of management's job.

Social media makes numbers too visible.

View counts, follower counts, likes, comments, saves, shares. It went up from yesterday, it went down. The artist next door has a million views, I have ten thousand.

It is no wonder that one might feel like their value is being graded by numbers every single day.

And it is not just the numbers. There are positive words, but there is also criticism. There are malicious comments. There is comparison with others.

Artists can see all of this 24 hours a day on a single smartphone. When you think about it, it is a remarkably harsh environment.

In our day, of course, there were sales and charts. But we didn't have the world's evaluation of us flowing into the palm of our hands the moment we woke up every morning.

Today's artists deal with that on a daily basis.

That is why I believe management cannot just say, 'Let's post more,' 'Let's do it every day,' or 'Let's grow the numbers.'

An artist's job is not to update social media.

It is to create art.

We must never forget this.

Of course, we will use social media. We will do marketing. We will look at the numbers. We will increase the number of attempts.

But if that leads to the artist becoming mentally exhausted and unable to write songs, it defeats the purpose. If they can no longer give their best performance live, then what is the point of social media?

I believe that the job of artist management includes not only scheduling and securing work, but also protecting their mental and physical well-being.

When should they rest? How much of the data should they be shown? Is it necessary for them to read every single comment? Are they being left to carry the burden of social media alone? Is the time for creating art being eroded by the time spent creating content for posts?

There are many things that management needs to consider.

And another important thing is to have proper conversations with the artists themselves.

Some people love social media. Some people struggle with it. For some, posting every day is natural, while for others, it is exhausting. I believe that applying the same social media strategy to everyone is fundamentally wrong.

Considering their personality, musicality, worldview, lifestyle, and their mind and body.
Designing a way to deliver their work that suits the artist while looking at all of these factors.
That is what producing and management are all about.

I often think of "creative and delivery" as a set.
What to create. How to deliver it. Both are important.
But at the center of it all, there is always a "person."
If that person breaks down, neither the creative nor the delivery can continue.
Even if you can generate numbers in the short term, you cannot continue your career for five or ten years.

Music is not a sprint.
It is a job that involves walking alongside the artist's life itself.

That is why, just as much as I focus on growing numbers, I want to

manage their ability to keep going.

Rather than winning on social media, it is about not being crushed by it.
Rather than going viral, it is about being able to keep loving music beyond that point.
And it is about that person still standing on stage ten years from now.
I believe that is what artist management truly is.
Selling an artist and protecting an artist.
It is not one or the other.

Doing both is our job.

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