Connected not neglected: An artist's online presence is as important as their music

Let's face it, as a new artist, today's musical landscape can be a tricky place to navigate. On the surface it seems like a much easier cookie to crack than that of times gone by. 20 years ago, the internet wasn't a place you got your music heard (you could just about run Ask Jeeves if you had a super quick dial-up connection), you had to hustle to make sure the people you needed to listen to your creations, actually checked them out. Parties were advertised with flyers and that holy grail of promotion: word-of-mouth hype.

Fast forward two decades, you could be forgiven that it's now a piece of cake to make yourself known, and it is, but that doesn't mean you should sit on your dubs and hope for the best. An online presence in this music industry day and age is just as important as the music you, as an artist, create. With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud, Mixcloud and Spotify being some of the most-used platforms in the world, to purely rely on your music doing all the work without being on all of these would be a mistake.

Even using just one of these platforms over the others isn't going to do your music the justice it deserves. Lehult, for example, is an incredible new house label based in Hamburg. Its vinyl releases sell out pretty quickly and the imprint's YouTube videos have amassed a huge amount of views. Despite this, the crew remain an underground label by definition but they're not active on Twitter or Spotify and that goes for the label as a whole and the artist's personal profiles.

For users who have abandoned SoundCloud in favour of say, Spotify, Lehult's music just won't be heard, they won't be added to a playlist and there's up to 100 million active users who will simply miss out. Of course it's not the end of the world but in an era when a generation of 18-20 year olds are glued to their computers and social media platforms, it seems like an opportunity missed not to be everywhere possible.

Giegling is another example. To the majority of people, the German label won't register as a crew they know but to the trained ear, its one of the most hyped imprints operating on the underground circuit. They have no digital music available, their releases are vinyl-only (although of course you can hear rips of the incredible output on YouTube).

While the label probably doesn't care about this (they've got steady traction without official hubs), it's not particularly forward thinking not to have profiles that their fans can engage with. The DJs that are active on social media across the board have the biggest reaches and largest fan bases. People like Seth Troxler, Skream, Jackmaster and Nina Kraviz keep every platform topped up with photos from their tours, memes that create conversation and in turn, their personalities are portrayed exactly the way they want.

A prime example of an artist who uses his online presence to connect with his audience is Eats Everything. The Bristolian is on Twitter everyday and he replies to 99.9 per cent of the people who contact him. Occasionally it's to tell them they're being a dick but most of the time it's to spark conversation with the people who are paying to go and see him play week in, week out. While some would argue it's just clever marketing, it also comes across completely sincere and is basically what these social platforms were created for. A genuine avenue of interaction with people you'd never usually get access to.

From videos of sets, to Instagram posts of a pretty building they've spotted on tour, an artist who shows off a personal or 'insider' aspect of their life, alongside amazing music of course, will go far. This isn't to say that the music isn't absolutely key: you have to be putting out top notch music for any of this to matter in the first place, but if the sounds aren't readily accessible at the click of a button, no matter where you're looking, you're narrowing down your gains substantially.

Labels that operate under a cloak of mystery will probably do well eventually if the music is of a gold standard but why not speed things up by making sure the people who really fucking like your music know that you're active online and offering multiple ways of listening.

To those artists who don't let us into their lives (and record bags), we're not asking for a photo of you in the shower. Simply, a tweet or two to say you've got a few gigs coming up in our part of the world or maybe even a Spotify playlist with all of your music that we can session over and over. Just let us know you're out there.

If you've got your wits about you, you'll be doing all of these things already.

Funster is Mixmag's Deputy Digital Editor and he tweets at least five stupid things a day, follow him here

Patch Keyes is a freelance illustrator and regular contributor to Mixmag. View his portfolio here