technology

We've Shed Our Twitter Feathers - Now What?

Like the mayor in Jaws, Elon Musk seems to be prioritising ideology over public safety.

Sean Adams

15 Aug 2024 — 11 min read

As another internet era comes to an end, there's a feeling of collective grief for musicians and music lovers alike.

Media orgs, meme-makers, and millions of terminally online internet users are experiencing the feeling musicians and DJs feel most nights - that moment when the lights go on and the room that mere minutes ago was a bouncing sea of limbs has quite suddenly emptied.

You filled a room/arena/field and now they've all shuffled off home. Hopefully they joined the mailing list or will somehow find you again...

Okay, the metaphor isn't perfect but you get the point.

As a promoter and artist manager, I've felt this sudden cliff-fall enough times to get used to it. Before the post-show euphoria comedown, there's usually enough adrenaline or something else smartly scheduled in the diary (even if it's just the after show), to ensure the big feelings of the night being over doesn't devour you.

For many artists, the freefall comes at the end of a tour. As I touched upon with mental health expert Tamsin Embleton of the Drowned in Sound podcast, post-tour exhaustion, malaise and forms of depression are unspoken issues for musicians, which is being made far worse by a crumbling live music economy... but that's a topic for another time!

It's Different To The End of MySpace

For musicians and everyone who has invested time, energy, and chunks of their imagination into building an audience on Twitter and in doing so making it an engaging platform to dip into, its sudden demise feels like the tide washing away a sandcastle.

In reality, the toxic tide came in and went out long ago, leaving the beach uninhabitable. The nuclear half-life of every inflammatory wave is going to take a long time to undo and not just on Twitter but all the places its toxicity has seeped into across the internet.

Like the mayor in Jaws, Elon Musk appears to be prioritising ideology over public safety. The destruction of the metaphorical town square has been a slow but steady implosion. By allowing misinformation, disinformation, abuse and harassment to thrive, the platform has felt like a disturbing and dangerous place to hang out.

Rather than being a place for 'free speech', Twitter has felt like a place to be shouted into silence by dogpiles (something NBC's Kat Tenbarge spoke really powerfully about on the DiS podcast). It's no wonder musicians have remained quite quiet on the big topics of our times, with many choosing instead to post there less and less, focussing on sharing live dates and retweeting nice bits of press.

Musk clearly wants to be Twitter's main character but his Lex Luthor version of Tom from MySpace is part of what's driving people away. The recent race riots in the UK are an indirect, perhaps unintended, but not unexpected result of not just Musk, but an entire media ecosystem, including corporate tech platforms, the Mail's inflammatory headlines, the Tory government's hostile environment policies, dehumanising slogans & rhetoric, and Farage's disproportionate BBC airtime.

Leaving MySpace was so early in internet history that it felt significant but we only had a few years nestling into using it. We barely knew it and then it was gone. Twitter on the other hand has been a platform many of us have used almost every day to get our news fix and found ourselves nattering in a public group chat for well over a decade.

Corporate Complicity

This loss of a inner-monologue-broadcast channel and meeting place isn't all about Elon, as much as he would like it to be. You could argue that some of the biggest companies need to share some of the blame for the current mess we're in with divided societies and the monetised rise of the far right.

For starters, advertisers have a lot to answer for and this piece is worth a read:

“Everyone can see that advertising on X is a treacherous business relationship for advertisers,” said Claire Atkin, co-founder of Check My Ads. “The upside to today’s news is that advertisers will no longer rely on Garm and will now take more direct responsibility over where their ads appear.”

Meanwhile, if Apple Music's quality control won't allow a track with lyrics like "god damn" without a parental advisory warning and Google can defund a music website for having paintings of bottoms (yes, that happened to DiS!), whilst they both happily host podcasts with Tommy Robinson and Spotify also has his pod alongside funding Joe Rogan's inflammatory false equivalence during a time of civil unrest, where is the corporate consistency? Is it complacency or an endless chain of indecision having consequences? Do the shareholders and partners care far more about profits than the public good?

There's been a lot of great pieces and podcasts in the past week about the the toxicity of the platform formerly known as Twitter and the rise of the far right (I'll link some bits at the end) and for those of us who stubbornly clung on, unwilling to let the place where we connected during moments of living history become a home of grievance, bigotry and pockets of fascism, it's hard not to feel a sense of loss.

I decided to write this week's newsletter partly inspired by some of your recent feedback (don't worry, some much more music-y posts incoming!) but mostly because my post about the melancholy of this moment, turning my back on Drowned in Sound's 100k followers, blew up somewhat over on Threads.

The quote posts from these musicians were particularly symptomatic of this moment in internet history:

For me, Twitter was a place where I've learnt so much and felt part of a hive mind. It might be where you discovered Drowned in Sound and how you ended up subscribed to this newsletter. It was a useful piece of internet infrastructure, designed originally to allow us to send public group text messagea, and now it's sinking into an abyss.

I feel far too conflicted to mourn the loss but it feels significant to mark the end of an era.

Much like MySpace and Friendster before it, I've made friends around the world on the platform, discovered tonnes of musicians, interacted with various heroes (Trent Reznor, Hayley from Paramore, etc, etc), seen movements form around everything from fairer streaming royalties to political uprisings, and learnt about secret Bright Eyes gigs.

On Twitter I've felt the instant ire of Calvin Harris for giving him 2/100 on Radio 1's Review Show (admittedly the two marks were for spelling, punctuation and grammar), seen posts I did working for 6 Music reach millions of people, had musicians/managers/labels tweet about conference panels I've spoken on tag me then gone to see their live show later that night which was incredible... and so much more.

I even ended up on a Sunday Times most influential people in the UK listicle, back when having 10,000 followers was rare.

Going to really miss Twitter when it implodes

It once led to be being "influential" enough to be featured in The Sunday Times alongside huge names@lilyallen @LewisHamilton @andy_murray @daisylowe @lucyprebblish @KensingtonRoyal & more

Serious klang: https://t.co/Rlx3FaKtzV pic.twitter.com/ioShIfMeqZ
— Sean Adams (@seaninsound) March 29, 2023

What Now?

For many, especially for musicians and their fanbases, Twitter is barely visible in their rearview mirror. Acts have long since abandoned it. They've built audiences on Instagram, converted newfound fans on Tumblr and TikTok to email lists, and experimented with Facebook Groups, Discord communities (hello to members of the NIN community who signed up recently btw!), Telegram channels and any other ways to engage with fans.

Starting again - as exhausting as that sounds - on Meta's Threads platform seems to be a popular choice as it is text-led and syncs with your existing Instagram audience. There are also alternatives like Bluesky that lots of journalists and bands like Mountain Goats are very active on.

For people in the creative industries, to my surprise and embarrassment, I've discovered that LinkedIn has become increasingly good for creative industry news (especially grant announcements) and discussions around the future of the music industry - I'm here if you wanna put on a tie and join in the conversation.

People are savvier now about how to post

The lessons we've learnt intuitively about pruning sentences to be succinct and speaking as much to the algorithm with key words as to your followers are all on show as people join new platforms. Lots of people are realising the phrases they can't use to avoid getting suppressed, even if certain alternatives are a bit cringe. There's also plenty of engagement farming and enragement bait tumbling to the fore as people scrabble to reconnect with their tribes. Don't hate the player, hate the gamefied social platforms...

One of the interesting things about Threads is how it's as much speaking to your existing followers as to strangers who might stumble across your post. Similar to TikTok and YouTube, that means offering something insightful, funny, educational or 'valuable' becomes increasingly key. Sometimes it means making sense of a feeling that's beneath the surface and giving people a space to notice if they feel it too.

Music makers often play around and experiment to find things that work. I've seen musicians posting about acts or genres they sound similar to, in order to reach audiences who are into that kind of thing. And it works. In the months I've been on Threads and TikTok, I've already discovered interesting acts by serendipitous accident, rather than algorithmic design. Keep the shoegazin' acts who love Deftones coming...

YouTube seems to be the platform where artists are posting a lot more to fans, with the feed now allowing more than just videos. Given it's where their music videos already are, I wouldn't be surprised to see a an evolution of YouTube in the coming months or a new video-led, much more social version of Bandcamp finally arise. Then again, I'm still waiting for Netflix to add some social features (music doc film club anyone?) and a way to reach the 25k people who follow me on Spotify.

For a lot of people, the chance to put on a fresh pair of socks is a much needed change. The opportunity to slowly reintroduce yourself and deepen your relationship with your followers whilst reaching new people is a decent dopamine rush but please spare a thought for those people adjusting to the venue lights coming on, unprepared to see the house they invested years building being demolished by Space Karen. Now, let that sink in.

As mentioned above, here's a digest of insightful bits from the last few weeks to read, watch and listen to about the rise of far right.

Firstly, here's a link to Deeyah Khan's brave and brilliant doc White Right on YouTube.