Lennon Bone argues that artists who avoid social media and business tasks have handed control to platforms and gatekeepers, shrinking their earnings. Streaming pays fractions of a penny. Taking responsibility for your own business, not outsourcing it, is the only way to protect your interests.
So I've been seeing a lot of artists and creatives online talking about how they don't really even want to do social media, that it's hard and they just want to do their creative work. I just want to throw a little loving reminder out there that this is kind of what got a lot of artists in the trouble that they're in in the first place. When we let someone else come in and speak on our behalf and take a big chunk of the revenue, like what actually starts to happen. Platforms like Spotify only pay fractions of a penny for a stream to musicians and producers because they know that they're going to put their stuff on there anyway, regardless of the fact that music is the. That people come to those platforms in the first place. And it all happens because people willing to do the business, lower the price of the art, increase the demand in favor of the business, not the artist. And just so this is clear, this is not about social media. This is about the business at large. But social media is a big part of the business for many artists. And when it comes to, like, finding somebody else to do the work for you, just remember the gatekeepers aren't in it for you, they're in it for them. That's neither good nor bad. That's just business, which is the very thing that a lot of us seem to be avoiding.
