CHRISTOPHER BENTON--Article 1

The blank (screen) generation is all atwitter about Twitter, tweets, hash (tags), and other jargonic miscellany associated with the “micro” blog. With its sub-text-message mantra of “140 characters or less,” Twitter is breaking down the former walls of communication and eliminating the middleman. The effect of this is clear in the music industry, which is rapidly adopting the technology for various forms of promotion. Many local members of the Athens music community are finding ways to use Twitter, too.

“I just got one. I was hesitant to use Twitter at first, but then my friend made me one. I mostly use it so fans know what I’m up to…,” Andrew Dykes said, a solo folk artists who plays under the pseudonym Green Gerry.

For Dykes, Twitter is not just a one-way interface with fans, but a dialogue. He may use Twitter to publicize himself and reach out to fans, but fans also have reached back, even sometimes helping him while on tour:

“Whenever I’m on tour, the question is, like, ‘Do I have to sleep in the car again tonight?,’ and there’s this mad search to find someone to stay with and couch-surf. But when I started posting on Twitter that I was looking for somewhere to stay in town, I’d sometimes get like 5 replies.”

Twitter may frequently be about self-promotion but sometimes, the self-promotion needs self-promotion. This meta-promotion, or extra layer of abstraction of Twitter, is one of the service’s main drawbacks, at least, that is according to Daniel Clower, a local booker and band manager.

“When I was an intern working with social media for a PR company…we made a few Twitters but the problem we had was getting people to follow. Even for our larger groups with tens of thousand of MySpace friends, we couldn’t even break a thousand on Twitter…The question was, ‘How do people know this Twitter even exists?’”

Clower tried advertising various Twitter accounts on other social media sites like MySpace and Facebook, but still to no avail.

“We quickly realized we were pushing the wrong content…publicists may run MySpace pages but when fans see a Twitter I think they want a personal connection to the band, so bands should operate their own accounts.”

While the “If you build, they will come” adage may not work in the Twitter world, there does seem to be a correlation to the amount of the Tweets, or content, with the amount of people who follow.

Adrian Zelski, lead singer in the reggae band DubConscious agrees. “We have a Twitter but I stopped tweeting when we got really busy and I purchased the club [New Earth Music Hall]…last time I checked, I think we had at least one thousand less followers.

Consistency may be the key, and while his band stopped tweeting, Zelski hasn’t given up experimenting with uses for the service. Zelski’s newly opened music venue “New Earth Music Hall,” has a new Twitter account. So far, it’s mostly a forum for announcing shows and drink specials.

It’s not just the artists, their publicists, and the symbiotic venue system that has the Twitter bug, the publications that cover the whole thing has it too. Michelle Gilzenrat, music editor for local magazine Flagpole, has been tweeting for over a year, mostly announcing secret shows and posting local music news. The speed of Twitter’s service was especially useful this past May: when the Georgia Theatre caught fire around 7 AM, Gilzenrat’s Twitter was constantly updated with instantaneous news about the event, hours before Flagpole’s official site could post the same news.

Twitter may be a useful tool for music industry, but it is still just one pillar of a much mor vast structure need to promote music. Publicist Michelle Roche, who runs the local PR firm Michelle Roche Media Relations, likes the new tools offered by the Web 2.0 paradigm, but issued a warning in her address to UGA’s chapter of IABC (International Association of Business Communicators):

“Although MySpace Music, Facebook and Twitter and all these other so-called ‘social media’ tools are allowing musicians to connect directly with fans, and publicize themselves, there is still a definite need for music publicists.

True, Twitter is not a solution for all, especially with the threat of fake Twitter accounts, that have scared-off national acts like Kanye West. Local solo singer-songwriter Allison Weiss also had a fake Twitter and Facebook accounts made in her name.

Whether you agree with it or not, Twitter seems here to stay, and for musicians and the record industry, you’re bound to see a lot more.