In my engagement with social media, I think that one thing that stands out as fundamentally important is the main goal of the user and their engagement with the platform. One that stands out to me is Twitter. When I am stating this too, I am also being very specific because of one facet of its function. To me, this aspect (the most important one in my opinion) is the speed of information and specifically how it is useful to me. I personally enjoy this speed of conversations and links to further information because of how it applies to my consumption of music. In the modern era, music is something that oftentimes no longer follows the conventions of the previous generation, as is the case with everything that is affected by technology.
One of the most industry-changing technologies of course, is the internet. However as obvious as it sounds there are many ways in which the internet directly affects how music is distributed and personally I think that Twitter may be one of the biggest contributors to some of the modern phenomena that can impact the economy of the music world. Its usefulness is the speed that new music is able to be circulated and spread especially in examples of clandestine music distribution accounts. It is oftentimes my experience that these accounts are distributing music that was not yet meant for release through means that are less than conventional. The speed of Twitter users’ interactions becomes crucial here as it seems many times that the original account who released an audio file for unreleased music for example, is long gone by the time that any enforcing parties are able to take notice. I think that more than anything else, I am grateful for this because there are many cases where I feel that certain songs may have never seen an official release day. Notably too, there are times where artists will act as if a song has been stolen when a track leaks, all the while knowing that they approved its indirect release in the first place.
To analyze what data Twitter is taking from users, I think that some of the most obvious are primarily used to further advance the engagement of the site, such as searches, likes, retweets and thread engagement keywords. As for some of the other, more personal data that Twitter has access to, I feel truly unsure. My guess would be that some of the more technical elements of the device that the app is being used on are sold to third parties who are able to reap a benefit, such as the location of users when active on the app and where and when they are logging into their accounts.
