John Zirker (worldofjz)
Josh Waters is a 23-year old R&B/Soul artist from West Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He recently finished up going on the “Underrated Tour” with J Holiday, the Grammy award-nominated R&B artist who released hit singles like “Bed” and “Suffocate” (“Josh Waters Music.”). Josh Waters is an artist who is starting to make a name for himself in the music industry. After releasing his first two albums, “143” and “Honey”, his talent, personality, and positive energy caught the attention of WLPWR, while he was working with Big K.R.I.T. on one of his upcoming projects (June 6 and EDT, “ATL Untrapped”). Josh then joined BNDWTH, continuing his journey as a singer/songwriter, and is someone in R&B to be on the lookout for in the coming years.
Josh Waters is a master at building great relationships with his fans. I was able to call him up before a video shoot he was doing a couple months ago and ask a few questions about how he developed those relationships, and how social media played a part in that along with his general success as an artist.
Josh only has a music page, and not a separate personal page on the different social media outlets he uses. When he was discussing this with me, he said “my personal life pretty much is all music right now. For the most part, I try to make that the only thing that you see on my social media, so whenever you see my page, you automatically associate it with me being an artist more so than my personal life. So if you follow the page, that means that you are a fan of my music and of me as a person. We always try to make the two coincide.”
Social media has had only positive effects on Josh Waters’ career. However, early on he admits that although it didn’t seem to hurt his career, he could’ve used social media better. When he addressed this, he said “my biggest problem was I always used to say I had music coming out at a certain time and the music may not have been done or the video may not have been done; and we ended up having to come back and apologize for having y’all expect something this date and not having it come out ’till a week later, or a month later, whatever the case”.
This issue has come up recently for him with his most recent single released, “24”. His first single released at BNDWTH, “Get Away” was one of his most successful singles (in terms of the amount of streams) to date. Although it only has 108 plays on SoundCloud and 578 plays on YouTube, it currently has 24,482 plays on Spotify as of November 30, 2019 (“Josh Waters Music”). In the buildup to releasing this single, Josh, BNDWTH, and collaborators/producers reached out to their respective communities through social media to say that “Get Away” would be dropped at midnight of June 21, 2019 on all streaming platforms. They continuously advertised its release through different media outlets until it dropped, and at midnight it was uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, etc.
Josh’s single “24” had a similar amount of plays on SoundCloud and YouTube, with 115 plays and 415 plays respectively, but on Spotify it only had 1,508 plays as of November 30, 2019 (“Josh Waters Music”). Josh and BNDWTH generated the same social media buildup, and the same hype, but “Get Away” had almost 23k more plays on Spotify than “24” (I wasn’t able to access stats from Apple Music, but if I was able, I am sure it would’ve had similar results). The only difference in the releases of “Get Away” and “24” was when “24” was supposed to drop on all streaming platforms, it didn’t end up being released on Spotify, Apple Music, and some other platforms until the next day. All of the hype and buildup led to many fans, including myself, not finding “24” on the main streaming platforms we use. This is not to say this was the sole reason for the 23k play difference between his two recent singles with BNDWTH, but it was certainly one of the biggest reasons “24” was not as successful as it could’ve been.
Outside of this, social media has proven beneficial for him. As he talked about social media, he said that the biggest way that it has helped him was in facilitating him “connecting with people and getting my hands on people that I wouldn’t have access to if I just walked outside of my door. There’s people in Israel, Australia, Africa, all over the world right now listening to my music. And of course, all over the states, states that I haven’t even been to, so without social media and algorithms and things of that nature lining up accordingly, I don’t think that I would have the reach that I do have, which still of course is not as many as we aim to get. But just with the 10k followers that we got (on Instagram), we have managed to reach almost every state, if not every state, and countries outside of the U.S. and I don’t think that would be as possible without social media and play-listing on streaming services”.
It was clear from my interview with him that the vast amounts of people that artists are able to reach through social media outlets is a big benefit. Along with this, however, comes the price of not only presenting music that people like, but also an aesthetic and a personality (at least on social media) that people also enjoy.
When I asked Josh about how it felt as an artist to not only be looked at for music, but for his social presence as well, he responded with an analogy, saying “If you were to elect a politician, you would elect them off of so much more than the speech they give. We are also fans of their appearance, or at least a level of approval for what we see. Because they’re gonna give you more than just the speech stuff. They’re trying to find ways to bring you into what seems to be their personal world. So they’re doing everything that they think you wanna see so that you buy into them as a brand as well as a leader. You know when I think of an artist, it’s kinda the same thing because of social media.”
He described how it made a positive difference, because now there are more ways for artists to sell their product. Somebody might start following an artist on social media because they like the aesthetic, then later come to find out that person has music they enjoy.
For Josh Waters, he enjoys the rise of social media because “having the opportunity to get into personal lives for real for real…it’s one thing to get you to listen to my music, but it’s another, can I get you to spend that $20 or that $30 to come to a concert. Can I get you to spend that $20 or $30 on that t-shirt or that hoodie at the merch table? To get yes’s from all of that, I think every box has to be checked in terms of reasons why they feel the need to support you financially”.
What he is describing here is known as 360 in the music industry, highlighting how money for a musician often times comes more from live performances and merchandise than from selling the music. Especially with the rise of streaming, with big platforms like Spotify paying only 0.00437 per play, this 360 is even more critical (“What Streaming Music Services Pay (Updated for 2019)”). Social media goes a long way to help artists with 360. Artists can become fashion icons where fans will want to buy their merchandise. The artists can also show more of their personality on social media to where fans will want to come see them live and sign up for meet and greets.
Another price of being able to reach large amounts of people on social media is balancing posting content what fans want to see vs. posting what you want. Figuring out exactly how to balance that, Josh says he is still currently learning. He did know one thing for certain, he said to me “I’m trying my best to be exactly who I really am, that way I don’t have to overthink the “character”, and I get to maintain a level of sanity. But even in doing that, there has to be a balance in terms of what they want to see, or creating something that they didn’t know that they wanted to see, and you just make them a fan of that”. He didn’t identify himself as a “trendy type of guy” or some type of social media guru. However, he thoroughly believes that “it’s the person that people tend to fall for, and fall in love with, and once that happens, they just want to see more of that”.