As I expected, my life has been a bit crazy for the last few weeks. My work is fast-paced, and I work with many different groups, so there’s always a new challenge to wrap my brain around, or a new problem to help solve. I’m enjoying being back in the thick of things, social media-wise, and that includes the sometimes odd hours and late nights.
This weekend, of course, was an example of that, as news of singer Amy Winehouse’s passing started hitting the Twitterverse shortly after 1pm, and the major news outlets about 20-30 minutes after that.
I’ve seen quite a few different flavors of a community since starting at Billboard. For example, I never knew that Lil Kim fans and Nicki Minaj fans were so fanatically passionate about those artists, nor did I know that there’s a bit of a rivalry between the two fan camps. Bruno Mars fans digitally came out en masse to support him when he appeared on our cover just over a week ago, selling out the issue online within 48 hours.
I’m knee-deep in Billboard’s communities every day. Like most companies, we have slightly different audiences on each of our social outposts (Facebook and Twitter are the ones I’m involved with the most), and different stories see different reactions and different attentions paid to them depending on where they’re posted.
The news about Amy’s passing is tragic, though, as many have noted, not wholly unexpected. Within minutes of the story breaking, our Charted Artists Twitter list was full of tweets reflecting on her life, mourning her passing, and declaring that they were “hoping for a comeback”. Flipping over to my own Twitter feed, I saw much of the same thing from people I know and follow. Facebook was the same for me – people were posting videos of her songs and noting that they were really hoping she’d get better and have an amazing comeback album. Hopping over to the Billboard Facebook page, we saw comments coming in about her death (no doubt they heard about it on Twitter) and asking us for verification within minutes of the story appearing on Twitter.
We ended up posting 4 articles about her death, and the comments and reactions on both Facebook and Twitter were much the same for all of them. Many people shared their condolences for her loved ones, many expressed their sadness that there would be no comeback album, many said that her death was tragic and is an example of what drug addiction can do to a person (note: the cause of death hasn’t been determined, but many people are assuming it’s due to drugs), and some people even went as far to say that she “deserved to die” because she had problems with drugs and alcohol. We also had a few people question why we weren’t covering the news in Oslo, and sharing that they felt saddened that the singer’s death was more popular online than the news about that tragedy.
What did I learn from all of this?
- Every community member has a voice, and it’s usually a smart idea to let them use it
- Communities are very willing to self-moderate if you give them the chance
- Letting conversations develop, but also letting people know that they aren’t alone, is a hard (but necessary) balance to strike
- Most people were genuinely hoping for Amy to overcome her personal demons and let her talents shine
- Music is emotional. Death is emotional. We’re talking about a celebrity death, yes, but one who, like most musicians, genuinely touched people’s lives.
So for you musicians out there who have growing fan bases, for those who are active on Twitter and Facebook, and for those who you talk to people about your music on a regular basis… don’t forget that the people in your community are actual people. I have a post coming up about how to balance “you” v. “your brand”, but I’ll say this to start – don’t be afraid to let your personality and your life shine through. I think that communities have a way of surprising the people that are in charge of guiding/moderating/managing/shepherding them – they surprise you in the very best of ways sometimes. I’ve seen it more times than I can count in my 10 years of being involved with online communities, and this weekend was no different.
Speaking personally, I do think that Amy’s life was ended too soon. I won’t remark on the cause of death since it hasn’t been verified, but I stand with the many who were hoping for a comeback album, and the many that were touched by her music. I truly believe that her raw power and talent laid the way for many stars today – she reminded the public that music could be amazing without being over-produced, and she reminded many of stars in the days gone by. She will certainly be missed, and I hope that society starts to think of addictions (of all kinds) as something other than a personal weakness.