The ‘online high street’: How social media created a new generation of buskers
Take it from someone who has gone busking precisely once in their life and then swore off it completely, it takes guts. The sheer amount of chutzpah it takes to stand out on a street corner and draw attention to yourself is already a skill I do not have, but to do so by playing music? Get outta town.
True, most buskers are not always that good, but so are most popular musicians if you take away the magic of studio recording and reverb. The spine it takes to get out there and do it is admirable in and of itself. However, one thing you could count on in those precious moments you spent stumbling through your Beatles and Oasis songs in the middle of Leicester Square before being moved along by the cops. This was, if anyone did step to while you were busking, which was a constant threat, you would be able to look them in the eye. You would be face-to-face with them, and whatever they could do to you, you could do something back.
Consequently, it makes the more modern form of busking quite possibly an even more terrifying prospect. More and more, the place to see brave musicians play and sing their hearts out is not on the high street, but on the algorithm. It’s true, if you’ve been on a social media platform and spent more than a second letting a video related to music play, you’ve probably been offered a short of some budding artist doing what they do best and trying to get the internet’s attention with it.
On the one hand, there’s a lot more control one can have with this. You don’t have to drag your guitar/keyboard/sousaphone (sometimes all together) into town, you don’t have to set up an amp, and you don’t have to deal with anyone telling you to move on or throwing empty cans at you. You can present things on your own terms and even show off more complicated pieces of art than mere one-person-band offerings, as the small armies of bedroom producers on Instagram prove.
What are the downsides of playing music this way?
However, you are also dealing with the internet. When someone spits a chip at you while you’re busking, you know whose mouth it’s coming from. When someone DMs you racial slurs and tries to dox you, who knows who’s responsible for that? Now, I get that it may sound like a stretch, and I realise that a lot of the discourse surrounding the dangers of social media is fear-mongering at best, and misinformation at worst.
That said, a large percentage of the musicians going online to make music are women and femmes. Considering their experience on social media without a guitar in their hands, such prospects become, sadly, much more pertinent. Yet, despite the murkiness and danger associated with this kind of busking, there are already a large number of success stories from playing an instrument for the anonymous online population.
Now, to be clear, this isn’t another article about “artists who got famous through social media”. It’s been known for years that the vast majority of acts tarred with that brush were actually signed to record labels first. Their “pioneering use of social media” was nothing more than the first step of their marketing campaign.
I think there’s a difference between artists who write and record songs and promote them on social media versus people whose musicianship is how they express themselves there, which they afterwards turn into a career. It’s a subtle difference, I’ll grant you that, but one that I think marks out careerists from genuine creatives.
Take Towa Bird as the perfect example. Born Victoria Bird to British and Filipino parents, Bird grew up a devoted fan of all things rock ‘n’ roll and took up the electric guitar at the tender age of 12. Her career didn’t come from one of the myriad bands she formed in her teenage years; it came from the way she spent her time during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020. She posted videos of herself to TikTok shredding her guitar along to songs she loved.
Her version of Tame Impala’s ‘The Less I Know the Better’ went viral, catching the attention of her management team first, which then led to a record deal with Interscope Records. It’s a story not dissimilar to Beabadoobee’s breakout track ‘Coffee’, a song uploaded to YouTube on a lark, got over 300,000 views and a record deal with Dirty Hit.
However, arguably the most famous example of this phenomenon comes not from a singer or guitarist but a drummer. Nandi Bushell took up the drums at five years old and merely two years later, her astonishing talent with the instrument was thrown into relief through a 2018 viral video of her playing ‘Toxicity’ by System of a Down. There’s a compelling argument to be made that she’s since become one of the most high-profile drummers in the world, playing with the Foo Fighters (whose frontman, Dave Grohl, she challenged to a drum battle during lockdown), Jack Black and Tom Morello, and is now starting her own band, Blu Reflection.
The story goes on. Whether it’s Fey Fili’s Appalachian folk stylings, DellaXOZ’s indie-rock tinged emo or the literal thousands of other talented musicians trying to make their mark, you can find someone who might just be the next big thing. If anything, you’re a lot more likely to come across a new, exciting talent by scrolling through TikTok and Instagram than strolling down the high street. For all the evils that social media has granted the world, at least the broken clock rule applies here.
