The Changing World of X – Usable or Loosable?

With Elon Musk’s takeover still hanging over the site, for better and for worse, the faults and failing of X have been shoved into the limelight. The blue check once synonymous with having ‘made it’ has now become a joke thanks to the introduction of a paywall, with many famous people now seeing it as an embarrassment to have one. But what does this mean for you and your artists? Is it still worth considering an important tool in your marketing belt? Let’s explore –

First off, though recent happenings may make it seem that X’s landscape is uneasy, its user base has seemed to come together in many cases, as a reaction against the sites recent commercialisation. This ‘us vs them’ feel to the new look X has given its landscape a new lease of life. 

If your artists doesn’t have a blue check, it now presents them as more connected with their fan base, less commercialised, and with a deeper care for their audience. If your artist chooses to go down the blue check route, there’s a level of professionalism that comes with that which may help them reach a wider audience as a whole, though perhaps with less of a connection. Of course, they’re are examples to disprove both of these points but as a whole this new tribal feeling that X is festering can only mean one thing… opportunity!

Pros & Cons – 

An example of the upside X can offer is Olivia Rodrigo’s marketing campaign for debut album SOUR. Rodrigo’s label, Geffen Records, utilised X to promote her highly anticipated debut. The label created a dedicated hashtag #SOUR, which fans used to share their excitement for the album. Geffen Records also partnered with X to create a custom emoji for the hashtag. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and broke multiple streaming records.

X, more than any other social media site, is a real-time platform that allows for immediate engagement with your audience. Your artists can quickly respond to posts and engage with their followers in real-time, building a stronger relationship with them and sharing news as quickly as possible.

It’s not all positives though. One downside to the sites usability, which has been prevalent for many years now, is that tweets have a short lifespan, and they can quickly get buried in a user’s timeline. This means that you and your artists need to continually post new content if you wish to stay visible and relevant.

As previously touched on, the massive changes in X’s landscape also makes it hard to predict what content will work. More than any other prevalent social media site, it’s important to view X’s user base as largely human and unpredictable. The site’s recent crackdown on bots, mixed with the delegitimization of  blue check users has meant that, in general, there seems to have been a fall in predictably explosive content. To solely rely on the site as your only marketing strategy would be a really poor move, but its potential to create meaningful notoriety for your artists, thanks to the sites smaller user base than the at times oversaturated Instagram, Irrelevant Facebook and hard to predict TikTok, means that it does still offer something completely unique when it comes to modern music marketing.

If you’ve found this relevant and helpful, visit Instrumental to see how we can help you further grow your label!