Music in the time of COVID-19

Social media is an increasingly important tool for independent musicians seeking to market themselves to potential fans and industry connections. Never was this truer than during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when a series of lockdowns prevented traditional forms of physical proximity and income-generating activities such as live music shows. This research project undertook a 12-month intensive ethnographic study of ten independent artists through a methodological strategy of ‘lurking’ on their social media activity across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, in order to analyse the ways that they presented professional, personal and political performances to their audiences. Utilising Goffman’s Theory of Self-Presentation (1959) this project considered the way that the ’backstage’ of musician's personal lives bled into the ’front’ stage of social media self-presentation during successive lockdowns and how the pandemic shaped the way that independent musicians communicated with their audiences. This project specifically considers the way that both ’professional’ elements of social media work such as self-promotion, innovation and monetisation of audiences, and ’personal’ matters, such as financial precarity and mental health, were communicated, as well as the demands of social media to be sensitive to wider cultural events and how the online musical community can be mobilised for political action. This research project addresses a gap in the literature with regards to the way that the COVID-19 pandemic shaped social media usage for independent musicians, as well as demonstrating the value of analysing the message separate to the sender and receiver when considering social media activity. The research reveals how musicians’ lives during the pandemic were increasingly isolated from audiences, precarious and filled with complex emotions resulting in new strategies for audience engagement and monetisation which put increased pressure on existing forms of emotional and relational labour. As such, the research sheds new light on the role of social media in mediating relations between musicians and audiences.