With the rise of the "social media DJ"—an artist whose online presence is the driver of their success—is the music industry still prioritising music?
What makes a “multimillionaire pro DJ”? According to French DJ Bambounou, it's all about reading self-development books, surrounding yourself with better people, faking it until you make it, and monetising your skills. His laundry list of tongue-in-cheek tips on Instagram goes back to 2021, when he tried to find an answer to that question by poking fun at the electronic music industry. But is it actually satire, or has Bambounou stumbled on the truth through his ironic social media identity? Bambounou admitted that he created an Instagram profile almost against his will. “I had a hard time getting into it. At the time, I still saw music as an incredible world where only talent prevailed,” he told me. “Boy, was I wrong!”
Bambounou's Instagram memes have since become his signature. He's a DJ who's recognised for his online humour, in addition to his musical skills—so much so that a follower once came up to him claiming his admiration for his memes rather than his music. Bambounou's online presence plays on jokes, it is a social commentary built on the idea that external validation is crucial for the visibility of a contemporary artist. But his career has also benefited from its popularity. By embracing memes and jokes as part of his personal brand, he was able to drive new audiences to his profile—some that don't even necessarily understand that he's a full-time DJ.
In recent years, there's been a rise of what we'll call the "social media DJ"—an artist who has strategically leveraged their online presence to develop a strong following and reaped the professional results, all thanks to clever use of social media platforms.
It's undeniable that online image now plays a role in the offline popularity of an artist. In previous decades, while image has always been a central component in the music industry through posters, editorial spreads or videos, these cultural artefacts were usually manufactured by specialised agencies, creatives or magazines. What's new is that the responsibility of an artist's public persona has transferred over to the artists themselves, blurring the boundaries of online and offline, between work and personal.
Because of social media, image and branding have infiltrated even the most DIY or underground music scenes. Previously, certain sounds were more naturally suited to image building: glam rock, disco or goth. From the '50s onwards, with the rise of analogue cameras, musicians were caught posing in exuberant outfits, in nightclubs or strolling through a park. Groups such as The Rolling Stones hired tour photographers to immortalise backstage moments. These images contributed to an impression of their magnetic aura, one that audiences could look up to.
Fast-forward to the year 2000, and there were paparazzi staging and controlling vicious narratives that could completely change the course of an artist or celebrity's career, all through the power of image. But the rise of social media has now allowed celebrities, including DJs, to assert more control over their own public personas and communicate directly to their fanbase.
How did a DJ's public image become so important?
DJs started out as background entertainers, providing the soundtrack to a party rather than being its focal point. Playing records—and the very idea of becoming a DJ—found its roots in the radio culture of the '60s and then hip-hop, according to Bill Brewster in his book The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries. Back then, DJs were often hidden from crowds in clubs, invisible figures serving the interests of those on the dance floor. In the '90s though, these priorities started to change. The golden epoch of the acid house and rave culture scenes allowed for collectives, clubs and DJs to earn a distinct reputation. Clubs established residencies and booked DJs for their social value, for the patrons they could draw to the club. Dance music re-entered the music charts and established itself in mainstream society, with artists like Roni Size and The Chemical Brothers winning BRIT Awards and Mercury Prizes, shedding light on previously niche sounds.
Increasingly, electronic music artists became public figures, while others, like those in the 90s and 2000s like Daft Punk, deadmau5, Boris Brejcha, Moodyman and Burial, found comfort in anonymity, sometimes hiding behind masks—another example of image-making. Then came the social media era.
Ian Bogost, of the Atlantic, explains social networking sites like Myspace (2003) and Facebook (2004), were initially built to reinforce and manage social relationships by posting one someone’s wall. Communication was all but unilateral.
Message boards also allowed artists and fans to network, like the infamous Hollerboard, where the likes of Diplo, Teki Latex, Erol Elkan, Fool's Gold, Spank Rock and many others were active members of a forum that helped spread regional sounds across the internet. Then in 2009, due to the introduction of the smartphone and Instagram, what was previously about sustaining and connecting became publishing. This change in technology turned both fans and artists into broadcasters of sorts, who were expected to drive eyes and ears towards the content they posted.
Musical success now seems exclusively predicated on announcements and images that are favored by social media algorithms. As Butterz record label head and electronic music thought leader Elijah stated in one of his Instagram posts: “the algorithm is a gatekeeper.” If you don't play by the rules, your work won't make it through. Some ways to feed into this algorithm is to advertise a certain lifestyle and share professional announcements. This is especially pronounced in the summer during festival season when DJs share their upcoming dates, videos of their former sets or a peek into their lives on the road. This was the case of Darwin, for example, who posted a carousel of her time in Tisno during Love International.
This active sharing of information on social media became even more integral to the role of a DJ due to the pandemic. Because clubs and festivals were forced to close, tech-savvy DJs and electronic music community figures found an opportunity to promote their skills in streaming services such as Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram Live. They could broadcast and share their online events around the world. Recording live allowed them to showcase the craft of mixing. The video content made social media even more lively as audiences commented, liked, subscribed and grew closer to their favourite artists, and people became accustomed to watching their favourite DJs rather than just dancing to them.
The pandemic's newfound access increased the demand for entertainment. As RA.'s Chloe Lula mentioned in her piece on Helena Hauff, many artists were motivated to post more in order to “stay connected to their fans and keep the attention of a dwindling (and increasingly competitive) cabal of clubs.” In an era where more than half the world's population, has access to social media, many of our interpersonal interactions have shifted to the digital realm.
Do we now care more about image than sound?
If we become too conditioned to the leisure and entertainment of our audiences, there's a risk that we lose sight of the art of DJing, according to authors Bill Brewster and Frank Brougton in Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, "Out has gone the idea of introducing records," they wrote, "and in has come the notion of performing them," which we can see through DJs posting and reposting videos of themselves performing.
It appears that the focus is now more and more on watching artists and less on listening to them. Last month, the German DJ Vera shared a post on Instagram about how constantly using videos to promote DJs' work on social media will hurt the industry in the long run. She told me that video itself is not the problem, but rather the type of video: clips that only capture peak-time moments and big bangers changes the expectations audiences have about what makes a "good" set. These videos highlight moments of entertainment, not the hours of craft to get there. Understanding the universe of an artist goes beyond a 30-second video or a static frame. That's why Vera hasn't given into videos right away, and tried doing things her own way. But she's now realised that this may hinder the recurrence of her bookings and has asked her followers to start sending her videos after gigs.
Many DJs have become weary and critical of their careers being dictated by algorithms. More and more names are engaging in conversations about our decreasing attention spans and the loss of self-worth that comes with being active on social media today. Bambounou said he's noticed a correlation between his quality of life and a frequent use of Instagram. He'd compare his gigs to those of other artists and feel competitive, despite his own clear successes.
"I've noticed that there's an inverse correlation between quality of life and Instagram use," he said. "When I look at other DJs who throw amazing parties, I say to myself 'Why not me,' when the truth is I'm happy for them and it's not my style to be envious."
A few months ago, another DJ, CCL, took a break from Instagram, claiming it was becoming "like DJ / Artist LinkedIn." But they also said that they don't have the luxury of quitting the platform indefinitely, because online presence has become so important in determining the success of a DJ. It's as if a brighter future is predicated on being perpetually online, at the cost of our mental health and well-being.
"Many of the elements that are supposed to provide access to music actually impoverish our relationship with it," wrote French philosopher Michel Foucault and composer Pierre Boulez in the prescient 1985 essay Contemporary Music and the Public. Now, being available to communicate online 24/7 about music impacts some artists' ability to actually connect with their own music or art. It's harder for DJs to spend hours digging for records, or for touring artists to find time to hole away in the studio. Many also juggle full-time jobs on top of their DJ careers, requiring even more time to create a steady stream of content to strive in the current industry model.
Can this emphasis on image hurt DJs in other ways?
There are other, more insidious mechanisms at play. The predominance of image can strengthen certain unconscious biases that already exist, such as gender disparities. The Paris-based artist Alexi Shell, former art director of Manifesto 21 and stylist says her professional path has handed her the tools to craft an online persona. Something she has fun with, but finds energy-consuming and that impacts her mental space daily. However, being present online is a necessity for her, especially as a woman in a DJ community that is still very much represented by male artists.
According to Alexi Shell, men have more luxury when it comes to choosing what to post online. It links back to sexist social patterns that have been going on throughout history. This can be backed up with data gathered through the ‘The impact of the use of social media on women and girls’ study requested by the European Commission. This report states that, among other things, platform popularity and likes exert “a primarily gender-conservative effect on how users self-present”, leads to negative body image and eating disorders in connection to the social media use, and women experience more sexual harassment than men. Posting online rarely comes without its aftermath.
Social media often replicates inequalities present in society, one in which women are constantly "seen" whereas men do not have the same aesthetic pressures. While doing research on Instagram profiles of eighty DJs, I found only four who chose not to publish images of themselves. Out of the four, three identified as men. The latter had a strong following based on graphic design content and warped visuals. Women, in this analysis, tend to highlight their persona at the center of their communication. Interestingly enough, both genders point out in their posts that it's a necessity to "feed the algorithm" with selfies, throughout their stories or when posting updates on tour dates or gigs.
The issue here is that algorithms prioritise certain content over others, and artists are forced to give into them for fear of not being seen otherwise. But exposing yourself also has a darkside, as audiences are also more emboldened to spew criticism and hatred. Shell confessed that recent media coverage of her music video came with hateful comments from middle-aged men focused mostly on her image, and claiming that she hadn't produced much of her work. Unfounded claims such as these can hurt an artist's reputation, and specifically women. Still according to this report of the European Commisson, “girls and women are more likely to experience sexual and gender-based abused on social media”. Female politicians and journalists also experience abuse and harassment, linked to their careers. It seems to be that as long as your job requires somehow being a public figure, your exposure to moral nuisance comes at higher rate.
It takes effort and guts to be present online as a women DJ. Such is the case for other women artists playing worldwide. Peggy Gou is often accused of using a ghost producer, while others have claimed DJs like Courtesy and Jayda G don't know how to DJ because sometimes they let full tracks play through. Women artists, on the whole, are offered less flexibility in their art. Also, social media today values artists, especially women, who capitalise on their image and sexuality. When they give in to these demands, people criticise them and say they became successful because of their looks rather than their skill—an ironic contradiction which highlights the toxic duality of online presence.
Instagram, in particular, is an image-driven platform that has a tendency to flatten the nuances of art and artists. It also pigeonholes people with their identities, making it difficult to break out of their individual niches, both IRL and offline. Because of this, it makes it even harder for artists to grow beyond certain bubbles and play for new audiences.
There are also success stories of artists who have grown their social media presence, their follower count and have reaped the subsequent IRL benefits. Bambounou is one of them. DJ Madam X is another. With 27,000 and counting Instagram followers, she said she's grateful for the existence of social media platforms, which allow her to connect with further-flung artists and communities, and travel more for gigs.
Her career began in 2012, around the same time as the emergence of Instagram. She chose to work alongside the app's evolution—the introduction of videos, private messages and disappearing Stories, for example—using the app as a professional tool while her career developed. While she remains sceptical about certain usages of social media, she was positive about the fact that it helped her connect with people around the globe and, on a personal level, discover sides of her personality. She explained that she takes extra time "picking up habits and ideas from seeing how other businesses and artists were using it to promote themselves." As her career grew, she became more curious about expressing herself visually online and "dressing up."
Instagram also helps drive sales of her record label, Kaizen. She told me that every time she posts about the catalogue and provides a direct link to purchase, people buy. In Madam X's case, Instagram has helped drive her career and success thanks to her curiosity for the platform. But for many people, that's not the case, with other artists growing tired of the constant learning process of content creation and questioning the dynamics image and success.
How do we find healthier ways of communicating?
Posting on social media gives the user the impression of freedom and self-expression. But algorithms are made to play into confirmation bias—by reaffirming a user's political stance, for example, rather than showing them an opposing point of view. This is the whole purpose of TikTok, whose advertisement-targeting algorithms are mainly supported by artificial intelligence. “It would be information finding users., rather than the other way around,” Alex Palmer wrote in the New York Times. French DJ Maelstrom said much the same in an RA interview. He believes Instagram, Facebook, and other image-based social media platforms dictate what content flows. We may be under the illusion of controlling what is shown, but could it be that it's the other way around?
Earlier this year, the record label Local Action published a series of stories on Instagram to express their need to move away from the platform. After digging deep into their own statistics, its record label director Tom Lea realised Instagram wasn't the most efficient way of getting their message across anymore. Even if the label's following on Instagram is decent—around 4,800—they can't reach their audience like they used to.
“When Local Action posts on Instagram, it reaches roughly 5-10 percent of our followers,” Lea said. “That's not people who interact with the post, just those who SEE the post on their feed. By contrast, at the end of 2022, our newsletter follower count was 4,500 followers, each mailer reaches 99 percent of those people and the average interaction rate was 38 percent—so about 1,700 people (and it's actually closer to 50 percent on recent mailers).”
Lea finds solace in newsletters where word-count isn't compromised, and a certain level of free expression is still possible. And it's also a political move. “The less I have to rely on platforms run by people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg for me and my artists' livelihoods, the better,” he said. But no matter what form it takes, an online presence is almost always necessary. Deciding to go offline indefinitely is not usually a realistic solution.
Back in October 2022, Valerie Ace performed Boiler Room. The DJ, who had previously expressed her social anxiety, was showered in hateful comments such as “ice girl.” Because she did not move or show interest in interacting with the crowd, most users called her “emotionless” or even “boring.” As an audience, we should speak up and counter these new expectations that are now rooted in our community when they become detrimental to electronic music's original values. The solutions aren't quite clear, yet, the first step is to understand the causes and consequences of our actions online. Some will argue that in the end, it's still all about the music. But how can it be, when the daily content we share prioritises images rather than sound and ultimately leaves so little for our ears to discover?
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