On Wednesday, Instagram unveiled @music, the company’s first content vertical and dedicated resource for specific artist-focal explorations and expressions. With more than 25% of the wildly popular app’s top users being musicians, music culture plays a vital role in the company’s ecosystem.
“For the past four years, we have become the home for artists big and small — a place where people across the musical spectrum come to share stories, reveal their creativity and connect directly with fans,” Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom wrote in a post on the company’s blog Wednesday morning (April 29).
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Beyonce brings nearly 31 million followers to the table on the platform’s No. 1 most-followed account, followed by Ariana Grande (30.1 million), Taylor Swift (28.3 million), Justin Bieber (26 million), Miley Cyrus (18.3 million) and Rihanna and Katy Perry (who each have 17.7 million).
Soon, @music will begin hosting 11 series and six posts a week from Tuesday to Sunday, with Roots drummer Questlove among the first to be featured. Additionally, Systrom added, “[@music] means highlighting music photographers, album illustrators, instrument makers and, of course, fans. In the Instagram tradition, we will also welcome community participation with a new, music-themed Monthly Hashtag Project.”
Alex Suskind, Instagram’s music editor, has very high hopes for the new vertical. “We consider ourselves treasure hunters, and we’ll search the platform for hidden gems and tell the stories behind those gems,” Suskind says.
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“Unlike Facebook, there’s not a field of structured data for people to identify as musicians,” explains Jonathan Hull, head of strategic partnerships/music for Facebook and Instagram. “We just rolled out verification at beginning of the year, so we’re still getting to know the verified folks and developing a much more robust list of verified music accounts. We don’t have the number yet, but we can see how important music is when we just look at the top accounts — we know who they are, even if their name is @champagnepapi.”
