The Role of Social Media Marketing in the Music Industry

In the last ten years, a series of dramatic changes has affected the patterns of the music industry. In particular, thanks to the increasing sharing of contents among people from all over the world, musicians can now become popular without intermediaries, by simply uploading their creative works on the web. The revolutionary power of social media in the field of music is the main focus of this dissertation. The discussion starts from the general marketing principles and then provides an analysis of social media marketing applied to the music industry. Particular attention is paid first to the evolution of the digital means and then to the three most popular social networking sites, i.e. Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. In order to provide a practical example of the promotional power of social media, a case study was carried out on Massimo Tortella, a.k.a. Porcapizza, an Italian busker who has been able to leverage the opportunity given by two viral videos to expand his music business.