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Thoughts on Facebook as a Tool for Artist’s Promotion. Is it Over? by Alberto Rigoni
Thoughts on Facebook as a Tool for Artist’s Promotion. Is it Over? by Alberto Rigoni… I started using the Internet at the beginning of the ’90s when just a few guys here in Italy were using it (the speed of my first modem was 9.6 kbps!). I immediately felt it was going to change our lives, and as we all know, that happened. The Internet became the fastest way to communicate with the entire world and to get to all the information you could ever need or want.
Back to 2005 I started composing my own music, and between 2007 and 2012 I released three albums as a solo bass player (“Something Different” – Lion Music 2008; “Rebirth” – Nightmare Records 2011; “Three Wise Monkeys” – Any and All Records 2012), three with the progressive rock band TwinSpirits, and one with the pop-electro duo Lady & THE BASS.
Even if music labels supported me, I’ve always felt it was necessary to do more in terms of promotion, and I did a lot of my own marketing activities. Marketing is a part of my personality and I really like doing that, even though it requires a lot of time and energy.
When I released my first album most artists were using MySpace – a simple but great tool for musicians who wanted to promote their music, and for people who were interested in discovering new music.
Everything was going pretty well until people started discovering Facebook. In a very short time MySpace was almost dead, and its team tried to emulate Facebook by changing the layout and adding more features (so many in fact that loading the pages became very slow and annoying). But it was too late… everyone started subscribing to Facebook.
Why did Facebook have the success?
In my opinion because, among other reasons:
– People use real names instead of nicknames (Hey! If you see a pretty girl during a party but you’re shy, if you know her name in a few minutes you can get easily in touch with her by Facebook!)
– Facebook allows users to share almost everything (text, pictures, videos, etc.), and people love to share and to discover what’s happening in other’s lives
– Liking posts and getting posts liked is a “drug” (not for everyone of course, but I’m sure many know this feeling). It’s “erotic” (not in the sexual meaning)!
In the first years of its life Facebook worked very well as a tool to promote music and arts. People were sharing tons of music videos, streaming songs, posting pics from their live shows, etc. I’ve always thought that sharing pictures was, and still is in terms of promotion, more effective than video and song sharing because a lot of people use FB during their daily jobs (at least here in Italy) and they are not always allowed to listen to music or watch videos.
Facebook, together with other web tools such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp, really helped artists to get many new fans. It was pretty easy to get thousands of views to videos in a few days (viral!). It’s also a great tool to get in touch with people that otherwise you would never meet in real life. You just need to know a name and surname! It is unusual to find someone who does not subscribe to Facebook!
One year ago some things changed. For example, the option to add friends to groups (what a confusion!) and sponsored posts on artists’ fan pages were introduced. At the beginning I was not happy with that, but when I tried to promote some of my posts by paying a little fee, I saw it worked very well and increased the exposure of the posts. Still, it’s a bit annoying that you have to pay to get more views on your posts.
Well, I feel that something is happening, particularly over the last few months. It seems to me that people are much less active in Facebook, and more than ever are paying attention to silly posts and pictures than to music and arts in general.
Fewer “likes” and comments on posts, less sharing… promoting music is getting very hard.
What’s happening? Is Facebook dying? Are people tired of it?
I think that sooner or later people will move to something else – some other social media site (still, I don’t know what). Maybe I am wrong, maybe not. Talking with other guys who operate in marketing, I’ve discovered that they have the same opinion.
Maybe there are some technical issues related to FB, or maybe it’s just because we are OVERLOADED by information and communication is too fast.
A friend said, “Hey man, maybe people are finally doing something?!” Well, that’s also possible 🙂
I’m wondering how can independent musicians promote their music if FB disappears… Yes, there are other ways such as Twitter (here in Italy it’s not as popular as in other countries), Google + (I think it’s not working well, if at all, at the moment), and crowd funding sites (never tried).
I’ve always thought that the best ways to promote music are the word of mouth, live shows and radio. But… a) we cannot control the word of mouth; b) the live situation, at least here in Italy, is very tragic (many venues have closed and musicians are not paid); c) getting airplay on big radio stations is not easy (here if you want airplay, you have to pay).
Anyway, Facebook is still one of the best tools to stay in touch with people, even though I prefer real relationships.
It’s time to think about new ways of promotion!
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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