Devin Townsend says “90 percent” of being a modern musician is creating content for social media.
The prog metal man makes the claim in a new interview with Metal Blast. He reflects on his initial naivety when entering the music business in the 1990s, then his shock at realising the scale of the emphasis on the ‘business’ side.
“I love and loved music so much that I assume that clearly the foundation for being involved with the music industry is art and emotions and music,” he says (via Guitar). “It was naive, you know, as a kid. And then when I get down, I realise, ‘Oh no, it’s an industry. It’s like anything else.’”
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Townsend then turns his eye to the modern day, where musicians are encouraged to generate content for such platforms as TikTok and Instagram. “Now, more than ever, I realise that 90 percent of the job is to be a content creator rather than write any music,” he says.
He continues: “And these are the sorts of realisations that I found to be very jarring when I was a kid. I found that – within the first year, less than that, within the first six months – I was made painfully aware of what the nature of the industry is.”
Townsend says he doesn’t “resent” the marketing-heavy nature of the music industry, acknowledging that “it’s just what it is”. He adds: “It’s like any industry, I just didn’t know. The transition between the idealistic version of what I thought it was versus the practicalities of what it takes to be a musician was, I guess, upsetting as a kid.”
In an interview with Prog last year, Townsend spoke about the “turbo naivety” he had when he started his career as the vocalist for guitar great Steve Vai. He revealed that the commodification of music initially shocked and angered him.
“When I moved to Los Angeles and joined Steve Vai’s band, it was with a type of turbo naivety,” he said. “I became so angry when I realised that this thing I held so sacred was nothing more than this commodity. From that point, I was like, ‘I want to use whatever musical talent I have just to make things explode.’”
Townsend, who releases his new solo album Powernerd on Friday (October 25), isn’t the only metal star to notice the powerful role social media branding has in music. In a Kerrang! interview this summer, Avenged Sevenfold singer M. Shadows slammed the band’s former label for trying to force a “viral TikTok moment” from them.
“When Avenged Sevenfold were on Warner Bros, they were trying to figure out how to create a viral TikTok moment. What?!” he said. “I’m a fucking 42-year-old man, I’m not trying to figure out how to do a viral TikTok moment. I’m sorry. You’re going to take 24 cents on our dollar and that’s all you can do, come up with a fucking fake viral TikTok moment?”
Townsend will tour the UK with Myles Kennedy next month. See dates and details here.
