Social Media and Artistic Integrity

Suddenly, I am starting to feel that there is some sense of freedom among artists in today’s society. This I realised after I observed the trends in YouTube and other social networking channels where creative people were freely expressing themselves without any need of mediator.

Artists are always known for their eccentricity and individualism. Their ego defines their works of art and that is what people around love the most. But in between the artists and people, there were always critics and mass media who defined the image of the artists. These mediators were people benefiting from the whole game. Though not all are as bad as I am making them sound :)

But the reality is that platforms and media always had a control over making or breaking an artist and they still do. Publishers always control the content of the book and records label always control the content of the music. Because behind this whole setup is a big business model running. There is nothing good or bad about it, it’s just the way it is. But there has always been an independent group of artists revolting this whole system.

Source : informationliberation.com
For example, along the line of mainstream cinema you can always find independent films breaking the norms of main stream culture and similarly garage bands breaking the trends of posed culture by main line music industry. But look around you today, you will find that nothing can stop these artists from reaching out to people.

There are free platforms for people to share their creativity and earn from them. Hence I feel that power to control the creative work is going back to the creator rather than to distributors. But it’s not that there was never any freedom before. But it took a lot of effort for creators to control their work.

Recently, Paulo Coelho, author of alchemist, told in his interview that he sold his recent books all through twitter and facebook and without any kind of promotional activities in main media. I think that is very encouraging for artists. Also youtube is full of self made artist doing great in their walk of life. This proves that a true and genuine artist always have a place in the world.

But why did I put the title as Social Media and Integrity? Well integrity is something that is very much the only assets of artists, as far as I am concerned. So I believe that social media is giving people to think freely and express in any way they like, irrespective of what others have to say. Hence preserving their integrity.