By Miles Mooreland/SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL
Over the past few years, social media has seen a meteoric rise in use and popularity. Societyfs attachment to outlets such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter has increased annually and, as a result, itfs much easier now than ever before for musicians and other artists to connect with a wider audience.
Locally, three seniors at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff are utilizing Facebook to display their singing talents. Erin Jones, Ricky Wade and Robin Roberts were killing time one day in the lobby of the fine arts center on campus when they decided to sing together. They chose to recreate Darrel Wallsf interpretation of the popular Gospel song gGood, Good Father.h
Wade recorded a video of them performing the song a cappella on his phone and posted it online the same day. They decided on Facebook rather than YouTube, where they figured it would likely get lost among millions of other videos.
gI just felt like the world needed to hear it,h said Wade, a 24-year-old music major from Clarksdale, Mississippi. The video would eventually hit 8,000 views.
As the view-count went up, the new trio stayed in contact over the phone. Roberts, a 23-year-old Memphis native, said, gIt felt kind of unreal to me. Every handful of views, we would update each other.h
Since they uploaded the video on Jan. 24, the triofs rendition of gGood, Good Fatherh has accumulated 344 glikesh and 122 gshares.h
A Facebook glikeh is equivalent to a positive reaction to a post, while to gshareh something on Facebook is to display someonefs post on the sharerfs timeline. Latonya Richardson, a mass communications instructor and social media expert at UAPB, explains the importance of shares.
gFacebookfs share-ability (not a word, but there is no other way to explain it) is key,h she said. gA video is shared one time on a timeline, someone else likes it, and shares it with their friends, and they share it ... and before long a simple video has been shared and seen by hundreds. If youfre lucky, thousands and millions of people will eventually enjoy your creation.h
According to Richardson, before the internet and social media reached its current level of prominence in society, artists and performers had to pay for television, radio, magazines or newspaper advertising to effectively promote themselves to the general public.
This form of promotion requires a large budget and excludes many artists who do not have the means to pay these outlets. The popularization of social media allowed the UAPB artists to distribute their sounds, videos and pictures with the public, all while allowing a form of two-way communication to take place between them and their supporters.
On Jan. 30, the three released a followup to gGood, Good Fatherh with a two minute video of them singing their own rendition of gLove,h originally performed by Kirk Franklin. This video received nearly double the numbers of gGood, Good Father,h with just shy of 16,000 views and 620 glikes.h They also secured 421 gshares,h nearly quadrupling the amount of their first video.
As part of their new-found fame, Jones, Roberts and Wade performed recently at the 30 annual UAPB Chancellorfs Benefit for the Arts at the Pine Bluff Country Club. They sang covers of songs by Jill Scott and Musiq Soulchild before performing a special rendition of the Negro Spiritual gI Opened My Mouth to the Lord.h
Michael Bates, choir director at UAPB, said that gtheir use of social media is the route to use in todayfs music business. They can reach a greater audience than they could have reached in the traditional way with live concerts and competition for recording dates.h
Jones, Roberts and Wade first started experimenting with Facebook as an outlet for their singing talents in 2015.
gTherefs this app called A cappella, and it lets you harmonize with yourself,h Roberts said. gYou can sing different voices. I did my first a cappella video, I put it on Facebook, and it got like 500 views ... ever since then Ifve been posting (videos).h
According to the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of all American adults used some form of social network as of October 2015. This marks a 58 percent increase since 2005Œs result of 7 percent of American adults. A whopping 90 percent of young adults ranging from 18 to 29 years old used social media.
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Posted By: How May I Help You NC
Monday, May 1st 2017 at 12:34AM
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