NOTE: This is definitely an article you’ll want to rip out to use for future reference.
In Twitter parlance, Fridays are Follow Friday (or, more correctly, #followfriday or #ff), the day on which many users offer suggestions on whom to track. To find anyone or anything listed below, just sign in to Twitter, click “Find People” and enter the name provided. If you don’t have a Twitter account, signing up is free and easy at twitter.com.
Artists: Coldplay fans —2.5 million of them — get offers directly from the band or through the mysterious Roadie #42 (@coldplay). Weezer is so serious about social media they take Karl, their webmaster, with them just about everywhere they go. He’s how fans first learned about their bad bus crash (@WeezerOfficial). Sloan likes to connect fans to new songs (@Sloanmusic). And check out Courtney Love’s grammatically and politically incorrect screeds (@CourtneyLoveUK).
Music News: Most music magazines and websites offer Twitter alerts with breaking news or links to interesting stories. Britain’s NME (@NMEmagazine) does a great job as does Spin (@SPINmagazine) and Rolling Stone (@RollingStone). Highly underrated is Canada’s FYI Music (@fyimusic), which is a great aggregator of content.
Music Writers and Bloggers: Many writers of music columns for newspapers push out their own tweets in real time. Neil McCormick, who writes for London’s Daily Telegraph, offers amusing tweets as he flits between gigs and interviews (@neil_mccormick). Bob Lefsetz is the music industry’s most outspoken critic and is a must-read (@Lefsetz). And when Billboard’s Glenn Peoples links to something with his tweets, I’m guaranteed to click through (@billboardglenn).
Record Labels: Most labels have figured out that Twitter can be an excellent promotional tool for their artists with offers, contests and news. Follow Sony (@Sony_Music), Universal (@Universal_Music), EMI (@emimusiccanada) and Warner (@warnercanada). Indie MapleMusic is also very good (@maplemusicrecs).
A great place to find more people and things to follow is at wefollow.com. And you are following Metro, right? You can follow Metro’s music writers from across Canada @TheMetroMusic.
Me? I can guarantee you lots of music news, opinion and links by following ExploreMusic, my web-and-radio thing (@ExploreMusic). And I’m posting music and tech stuff to my personal feed (@alancross) from everywhere all the time. For example, I’m in Oslo, Norway, today. Find out why with a quick follow.
