Scots singer-songwriter Tom Walker hit No1 with his debut album in 2019 in the same year he won a BRIT Award and is back in the Top 10 with his follow up.
But Walker, 32, says he wouldn’t have a record deal if he was starting out in 2024 because labels are more interested in your social media following than your songs.
Walker, who enjoyed a chart-topping debut album What A Time To Be Alive and is No4 in the charts with the follow-up called I Am, says he now has to split his time between trying to please people on social media and playing music.
And he believes great talents will be missed if they are introverts and prefer to let their music do the talking because of the need to build a following online.
He said: “When I signed my record deal, I didn’t have any social media. I think I had a personal Facebook account and that was it.
“So it’s really strange to see the difference.
“I can’t imagine that happening to an artist now, signing a deal without having 50,000 followers to prove that you can create an audience.
“I think the amount of social media that is expected of new artists and an existing artists as well has totally changed.
“Even in 2019, when we put the first album out, it was a lot less and it just seems to keep ramping up every year.
“The best songs are written by people who are introverts and not people who are able to sell something very quickly on TikTok in their 30s.
“The music industry always changes. It’s gone from vinyl to tapes to CD to streaming to streaming and social media.
“I think it’s I think it’s going to affect what songs make it through.
“You can get all bogged down in all that like an old man or you can just get on with it because it’s a real privilege to do music.”
He added: “I’ve got a love hate relationship with social media. I always love the music and I like being in the studio and I like recording songs.
“But I do feel when you sing to a major, you expect them to do a lot of the marketing and that is being switched over to the artist, just marketing everything. And you know, the percentage is still the same. So it seems like a bad deal to me.
“I think it’s just trying to plan and ways to do it. So you spend the day, you know, really thinking ahead of what you’ve got and what you need to capture and just planning it properly because otherwise you end up doing it.
“And I’ve been in this trap before. I end up doing social media every day. And then you do end up writing songs and you just end up spending 60% of your time recording, doing videos.
“That’s definitely something I’m keen to talk about. I’ve tried to, you know, really limit it to like a day.
“I don’t mean that that’s totally fine, but I just I don’t want to be doing social media every day if I’m honest. It’s not for me. I just I just really want to play my guitar, write songs and be a musician and do gigs.
“But if you’re an independent artist and your song goes viral on TikTok, that’s an amazing thing.
“But I do worry about that kind of listening to introvert songwriters who don’t have a huge personality and their songs just never see the light of day.”
Walker is one of Scotland’s most successful breakthrough stars of the past few years.
His song Leave a Light On was been a hit in various countries worldwide and his 2019 debut album What a Time to Be Alive topped the charts.
That same year, Walker took home his first ever BRIT Award for Best British Breakthrough act and went on to be the biggest selling UK signed artist of 2019.
Walker will support The Script on tour next month including a show at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro.
Born in Scotland, he grew up in Manchester and now lives in London, and said all those places have a special place in his heart.
And he was keen to point out that despite people questioning his Scots roots because of his accent, he is a Scot.
He said: “My whole family were born in Scotland but I moved to Manchester when I was three and a half.
“I’ve been in London since I was 19. I came here to do a degree and I stuck around because there seemed to be a lot of opportunities for music.
“I feel like Manchester, London and Glasgow are all home in a way. Those are my favourite gigs because all three feel like a homecoming.”
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