Musicians are increasingly expected to do more and more today, feeding existing social platforms and encouraged to sign up to the hot new tool or app du jour. That’s on top of making records, touring, doing promotion, worrying about money and trying to have a private life.
Labels, agents, producers, pluggers and PRs only see part of the pressure acts are under, but managers see it all. Which is why the Music Managers’ Forum in the UK created The MMF Digital Burnout Report in May this year.
It was inspired by the NY:LON conference in February and the subsequent Music Ally article on acts feeling burnout. The MMF held two roundtables with 40 artist managers to better understand what pressure they and their acts were under and, more importantly, what could be done about it.
“Managers on the roundtables brought up the huge pressure being applied by labels for artists to generate a continuous stream of ‘content’, as well as the tendency of labels to judge an artist’s value based on social media numbers rather than the integrity of their music,” said the MMF.
This gets to the very heart of the matter: that social media is both a barometer of perceived success as well as a stick to beat artists with (if they are not “doing numbers” with their posts).
The recommendations of the report included: labels discussing digital burnout with acts/managers and providing more budgets for social media creation as well as ensuring acts have proper time off; managers being given access to more data from DSPs/distributors so they have better clarity on which promotional activities they undertake are working and which are not; leading platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Spotify to provide “tools and tips to reduce digital pressure/simplify digital engagement”.
While The MMF Digital Burnout Report is not a campaign as such, it is part of wider industry campaigning to change how acts do things, to lower the pressure that is being applied to them and finding ways to still engage with platforms like TikTok without being overwhelmed and damaged by them.
