Social Media Turmoil Creates Diaspora for Independent Music Fans

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There are a few fundamental reasons why independent country music has risen up over the last many years to rival the mainstream. The proliferation of technologies that allow almost anyone to record and release music is a major one. The rise of social media as a way for artists to connect directly with listeners, and for fans to connect with each other has been a significant factor as well. So have alternative outlets to mainstream radio, such as the soundtrack of the TV show Yellowstone.

Let’s also not forget to mention the incredible creativity of some very intrepid performers who’ve been able to leverage these opportunities to turn the tables on the mainstream, and truly present a more healthy alternative to commercial country. Ultimately, they deserve much of the credit.

But as you probably know, Yellowstone aired its final episode on Sunday, December 14th. And though a spinoff is in the works—and another Taylor Sheridan-produced series called Landman starring Billy Bob Thornton has been launched with a similar soundtrack—it’s tough to see any show becoming the #1 in all of television again while including an independent country soundtrack.

That’s not the only adversity independent country artist and their fans might be facing heading into 2025. Ever since the rise of social media, the various platforms have never been more diluted and Balkanized, turning once vibrant, active, and engaged music communities into a diaspora splayed amongst a of host of different services.

There is still an awesome ability for artists to connect with fans, and for fans to find the music that most speaks to them through social media. But as opposed to a few reliable services we all share that facilitates the kind of super virality that saw the rise of Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Cody Jinks, and Zach Bryan, now we’re all spread out like a bad rash, separated by political ideology, while perhaps the most lucrative (and controversial) of all the platforms—Tik-Tok and its massive 170 million users—faces a very perilous and uncertain future.

Though people on the political right love to praise the takeover of X/Twitter by Elon Musk as a win for free speech, Musk’s polarizing public image has also resulted in many people fleeing the platform en masse. There was a second round of defections to other platforms after the recent Presidential election, and the appointment of Musk to a position in the Trump Administration. Music performers and many of their fans fled the platform in droves. For example, Saving Country Music’s X account lost 400 followers alone post election.

Where are these users going? Many of them started using Threads, which is Instagram’s Twitter alternative, ultimately owned by Meta, a.k.a. the parent company of Facebook. As Farce The Music once put it, Threads seems to be filled with people that act like it’s their first day on the Internet. It doesn’t really seem to have any rhyme or reason to the algorithm, and unlike X/Twitter, it doesn’t have a “Following” toggle where you can turn the algorithm off entirely, and simply see the posts from the people you follow in real time.

Nonetheless, Threads has become a strong X alternative in music, in part due to the adoption of the platform by so many musicians, and its close ties to Instagram, which for many musicians is their social media platform of choice.

Another X/Twitter alternative that dramatically rose in popularity right after the Presidential election was Bluesky, founded by the old Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Where threads works slightly different from Twitter, Bluesky might as well be an exact carbon copy. The problem is that just like Trump’s Truth Social app for the political right, Bluesky feels almost exclusive to left wing users and political posts. Bluesky does have a “Following” button to turn off the algorithm, but it’s not the home for musical discussion or discovery like Twitter was in its heyday.

One of the pitfalls of social media is the echo chambers of thought and perspective they helped create since you can curate what you wanted to see, and block what you don’t. By users self-segregating themselves between X and Bluesky, that issue is now dramatically exacerbated. Nothing on either of the platforms seems to go viral anymore unless there is a political quotient since that’s the primary driver of communication and engagement on these platforms, not music or arts in general.

Meanwhile, as Instagram’s Threads was seeing slow and steady growth as a X/Twitter alternative, as soon as Bluesky became the hot thing, growth at Threads tabled off. That means there is no consensus pick for short form social media. It’s now splayed out across multiple platforms. Ironically, this makes all of these platforms less effective for not just connecting with music fans, but for political action.

Facebook is still Facebook, but still remains the domain of older people, and completely subject to algorithmic curation. You can follow all the pages of your favorite artists, but might rarely or ever see their posts. Instagram (owned by Facebook) has been perhaps the best social media tool for musicians, and for years now. Ever since you can add segments of music straight to posts, it’s perhaps the best way to directly engage with music. And unlike X, Bluesky, and Facebook, it remains mostly positive.

Then there is Tik-Tok. As a social media platform, it hasn’t just been helpful to undiscovered and independent musicians, it’s been downright revolutionary. Over the last couple of years, it might have been the most important discovery and dissemination point for new music in existence, despite the obtuse and unregulated nature of it.

But now there’s a good chance Tik-Tok could be going away, and very soon. After Congress passed a law, and President Biden signed it demanding Tik-Tok divest its Chinese ownership or become banned in the United States, Tik-Tok has been fighting for its survival in the courts, and losing. Unless the Supreme Court can bail it out, it’s scheduled to go away completely on January 19th, 2025. That fate might be delayed, or if a domestic owner comes forward, perhaps it will be saved. But right now both legal and tech experts give Tik-Tok a 50/50 chance of survival at best.

But even before the potential Tik-Tok ban goes into effect, the platform is already seeing a dramatic loss in it’s ability to launch new artists. As Billboard recently reported, the whole dance challenge craze that was perfect for featuring music has almost completely evaporated. The influencer campaigns where artists, labels, or managers pay to try and get tracks trending on the platform is also paying off less and less as time goes on. There are exceptions to these rules, but Tik-Tok is clearly facing uphill battles as a music initiator, and on multiple fronts.

Whether Tik-Tok is ultimately banned in the United States, Canada already has acted against the company, and due to the same security concerns on data collection the United States has raised. On November 9th, Tik-Tok was ordered to cease all operations in Canada. However, the app is still available at the moment. It just has to be served outside of the Canadian border. The state of Montana also banned Tik-Tok, though that ban is currently held up in the courts.

Even if these bans don’t take effect, others might in other states, provinces, or countries, limiting the app’s reach. And the concerns with Tik-Tok aren’t entirely unfounded. The fear is all Tik-Tok users could be handing over their most important data to a foreign rival. That is why these governments are moving forward with bans despite the app’s widespread popularity.

Tik-Tok is also the biggest problem with Instagram, which clearly feels the need to compete with Tik-Tok by filling users feeds with viral videos from accounts they don’t follow, putting posts from your favorite music performers second. Still, Instagram remains the best app for both artists and fans to connect with each other, and is clearly poised to be the winner if Tik-Tok indeed dies.

So what should you do as a fan or an artist? Despite X/Twitter’s polarizing nature, it’s still the place where the vast majority of media spends its time, because it still works best for aggregating news. So avoiding the platform altogether should be done at your own peril. And even though Threads and Bluesky are fine alternatives, their reach is too limited at the moment to rely on them solely.

Ultimately, performers need to try to have a presence on all the relevant platforms, even if it’s perfunctory. The social media rules that were in place before all the upheaval still apply: Whatever social platform best fits your personality, go with it. If you’re great at composing quick little textual quips (see Jason Isbell), X, Threads, and Bluesky is your jam. If photos and videos are where you excel (Sierra Ferrell), Tik-Tok and Instagram should be your focus. For longer form posts, Facebook still rules.

But everyone should prepare for a world where Tik-Tok doesn’t exists. And fans should be aware of all the social media upheaval, and work to re-connect with their favorite artists wherever they land. After all, the ability of grassroots fans to band together, and push an artist, song, album or video to the forefront of whatever platform people are using is the power that has put independent music and performers in a better position than they’ve ever been before.

© 2025 Saving Country Music