Today, retweets, comments and likes on social networks can give someone an enormous visibility in a flash in a flash. In this way, some people are emerging from social networks and getting notoriety, especially in the field of art, transforming Instagram, Twitter and YouTube in real talent incubators. These people use social networks perfectly : while they put their creations online, they are building a community of fans and getting enough visibility to begin a professional career and live thanks to their passion. Let’s see some examples of artists who managed to live of their passion thanks to social networks.
What a better example than Justin Bieber ? This world wide icon, at the age of 14, put a video of him singing a Chris Brown song on YouTube. In 2008, this video literally broke the internet and the young teenager became famous over the world in a few weeks. Incredible !
Three years later, in 2011, the 17yo Justin Bieber recorded a song with Chris Brown and the clip video has been seen more than 230M times on YouTube. The less we can say is that YouTube helped Justin Bieber to conquer the planet. In 2015, he released « What do you mean ? ». This song has been watched more than 1,8 billion times on YouTube, just enough to transform the cute teenager in a global icon.
In France, a rap band called « 1995 » (with Alpha Wann, Nekfeu, Areno Jaz, Fonky Flav’, Sneazzy, Hologram Lo’) got its break on YouTube : in 2008, they started putting videos of their songs online. They got many views and it has been a success. Then, they released two EP in 2011 and 2012 in freelance : thanks to the notoriety they got on YouTube, their EPs sold more than 40,000 copies.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q7lInSt2Xgs
In 2015, Nekfeu, member of 1995, started a solo career and released his first album (Feu) and a video clip for the song « On verra ». This one has been watched more than 70 million times on YouTube. In 2016, he released a second album Cyborg, without any communication on its release, but it didn’t prevent him from being one of the most listened rappers in France. And all of this started on YouTube…
YouTube is not the only social media to highlight young artists. Instagram can also do it. Indeed, the Belgian singer Angèle has been revealed on Instagram : she used to post videos of her mixing singing, playing the piano, and funny situations. This association pf humor and talent seduced a lot of Instagram users (her community is composite by more than 195k followers on Instagram).
https://www.instagram.com/p/8svDk2IRcF/?hl=fr&taken-by=angele_vl
Thanks to her success, Angèle had the opportunity to record her songs in a studio and to make a video clip. This song and its video clip became a hit, with more than 8,3 million views on YouTube. For a first song, that’s just incredible.
Twitter is also a place to emerge a lot of talents. For example, the French graphic designer Seas, thanks to the visibility he was given by his followers (with the retweets, likes, etc.), managed to create his clothes brand. Last year, he even did a collaboration with the shop Citadium : he opened a kind of pop up store in the shop during a few weeks. Today, each time Seas releases a new collection, he manages to sell everything out, thanks to the notoriety he won through Twitter.
https://twitter.com/Seasonsart/status/926887008009687040
To conclude, social networks help the artists by giving them opportunities to have an important visibility in a short period of time. It can change the life of some talented people, as we saw with the previous artists.
GUILLAUME PAULUS
Hello Fleur, I think it depends on how you manage your social networks. If you take Justin Bieber's example, he's always been at the top of the trends since 2008. However, if you take Psy's example, he hast just been famous thanks to his song "Gangnam Style", but today we don't hear anything about him anymore.
Hello Guillaume, don't you think that this success people get is just ephemeral, that social networks made them blow up but they will soon return to oblivion ?
Hello Fanny ! To become famous on social medias, I think that you need a talent (humor, photography, singing, drawing, writing, etc.). Then, I think that you must know how to communicate and how to use social networks, because if you don't know how to use these tools, you won't be able to spread your talent !
Hi Guillaume, very good article ! But do you think that everyone can become famous thanks to the social media ?
Fanny
Hello Clara, indeed, I think that today, the visual counts as much as the sound for the musicians because their principal way to be famous is YouTube. On YouTube, you upload videos, so the musicians have to realize beautiful video clips to accompany their sounds. In this way, they get more views and more notoriety. Don't you agree with it ?