MUSIC
The Power of Social Media— Meet Ellie Dixon
The 22-year-old musician making waves on Instagram and TikTok.
I was scrolling through my TikTok ‘For You Page’ (a criminally addictive place), when I came across this duet TikTok video of a girl harmonising to someone freestyling.
Then, that video led me to explore all her other TikToks (seen below) as well as her music.
That’s when I realised; if something as simple as the algorithm recommending me a TikTok led me to find out more about someone and the work that they do, what could this do on a much larger scale?
Ellie’s social media(s) were a great example of leveraging social media to further one’s career, and I wanted to know more. And who better to ask than the woman herself?
Here’s Ellie Dixon, in her words.
Ellie has several EP’s and several singles (all of which can be found here) — just one part of her journey in music spanning the last 7 years, mostly kickstarted by the right combination of a family environment and one particularly great teacher.
“Yeah I started when I was 15… I had always been in choirs and I played piano since I was 7… I had a generally musical upbringing. Then I got some free singing lessons as part of a music programme at my school, so I started singing and was terrified about it. I slowly came out of my shell with my singing teacher and it was like ‘Oh, where did that voice come from?’. My singing teacher is actually a huge part of it. She’s amazing. She really pushed me to go to school concerts, open mic nights… and it kept scaling up and up.”
She continued to sing and write, and eventually learnt how to produce, bringing her to do more open mic nights, gigs, and continue building her skills.
“I’d be gigging and then I started producing, and that kind of happened for six years from 15 years old.”
As a non-musician personally (or at least not one that does it for a living), all my ideas about what professional musicians did to ‘get big’ was either through general media or through movies, which is why I was surprised to find out about the impact that COVID-19 had on Ellie’s career.
When asked about whether COVID-19 was detrimental for her, she said
“Well, it’s funny because it’s literally been the best time for my career.”
And she was quick to break down any preconceived ideas I had about musicians and money.
“[…] gigs as a developing musician are very 50/50, I think they’re super fun, a great experience, and you actually get a tangible face to face reaction to your music. You can try new things out, talk to people, network, great, but you make piss-all money. You make absolutely no money.”
So, how did she adapt to the pandemic?
She moved the game to social media.
“Yeah, quarantine was like a free pass to just make. And that’s what I did. I made loads of YouTube videos, I was making a cover every two weeks. I was posting loads of stuff on Instagram, doing writing challenges because loads of artists put out instrumentals for people to write and play to. It was the first time I actually published stuff with me rapping properly. It was just a really nice way to keep up songwriting, but not to commit to anything. Just put it out, see if people like it and move on, you know.”
In the lead up to this interview, which was about two weeks, I would occasionally take a look at Ellie’s stats — and what I saw was nothing short of tremendous.
From 6,000 to 13,000 followers on Instagram.
From about 150,000 to 207,000 followers on TikTok.
“It’s mad… this last month has been the craziest growth I’ve ever seen.”
Ellie also cited her environment as being a huge factor in this growth.
“So basically, when I moved home my parents gave me a year. They said you don’t have to make any money, but you’re gonna have to work hard. You need to show us a plan… so I’d sit my parents down and say this is the plan for the year, this is what I’m doing. So they knew that I was working towards something whether or not that made money.”
During COVID-19, as the arts and media industries have been heavily impacted, with governments having to pump subsidies and packages to get the industry back on its feet. Once again for Ellie, she’s found other ways to make a living in a country known for having high costs of living.
“…yeah, when COVID hit, people started needing bedroom producers because you can’t go into studios. So I hit a point where I started to feel confident enough that I could produce for other people. I had an offer to make a huge sample pack and that was a big confidence booster for me, that I actually managed it.”
She also was able to monetise her other skills in music to make money through teaching.
“…and then I started offering Zoom lessons to people for general artist advice, production advice, songwriting advice. Because I had someone reach out on Patreon saying ‘Hey, I’ll pay you 35 quid to just have a chat with you’. I thought ‘Oh sick, okay’, we had a chat, and I just didn’t realise how much I actually had to offer. I was suddenly like, wow, I have all this knowledge that I use all the time.”
At this point in the interview it was clear to me that Ellie really had a grip on the whole ‘making money online’ thing, which is something that I’m also trying to figure out how to get around, and she had this great piece of advice.
“…it’s just having the confidence to put a price tag on your ability, and offering things. I just put an Instagram story out and had like 10 people ask for a lesson. You can just offer things! Making money now, you just have to be really proactive.”
And proactive certainly is the word for it — since the start of COVID-19 in the UK, Ellie has uploaded 24 (well-produced) YouTube videos and 80 TikTok videos, which at the time of writing, have a collective view count of 8.52 million views.
Something I found interesting is that all of these 104 pieces of content are all shot, edited and put together by Ellie herself — making her really versatile.
“I’ve always been really independent and wanted to do everything myself. I’ve been video editing since me and my sister were making the most cringey family videos as kids. And I was producing as soon as I was singing, and as soon as I was singing I was teaching myself guitar. I’ve always been building those skills up. I think the most important thing is that if I didn’t enjoy any of these things, I wouldn’t do them.”
Although at the moment, Ellie is using what most would consider to be high-end gear (stuff like Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro and more), she made it very clear that you absolutely do not need all the gear (something that many successful creators already preach).
“And again, I’m super lucky that I have the gear to do it as well…I mean, I was editing on iMovie until last year. I’ve been using free stuff since the start of time and it’s completely doable. I don’t want people to feel disheartened when you see creators with fancy gear, because you can do it cheap.”
We talked a lot about social media, and in particular one of its many downsides — artificial beauty standards. As an outsider to the music industry, I was curious; with artists spending millions each year to ‘stay young’ did a pressure exist to “look good”?
“It’s a huge problem with social media and media in general — I mean, as soon as we were able to print photos, women were a commodity… I totally feel the pressure, but I’ve been pretty lucky in that I feel like I get a lot less pressure than a lot of other people do.”
Ellie attributes this lack of attention on her looks and pressure to the style of content that she does;
“I think the content I make is very personality and music focused… I’m never concentrating on looking pretty and I’ve infused it with so much madness, I think people don’t really have time to breathe and go ‘oh does she look nice’.”
Although there is always a negative side to social media in the form of bullying, Ellie tends to focus more on the bright side of it all — given that after all, she’s been able to share her passion online and make a living out of it.
“I love social media, it’s the biggest social experiment and it’s so interesting… it’s been a really amazing journey [on social media] and I think that it’s increased my career tenfold.”
Over our conversation that spanned across two hours, we delved into many topics (some of which I’ll cover in a separate piece to do them justice) and a highly debated topic, the duty that one owes to their platform was one of them. Should entertainers stick to entertaining, or do they have a responsibility to educate their audience? Are celebrities and those with a platform entitled to an opinion?
“The way I look at it is that you can label anyone as an entertainer, but at the end of the day, they’re just people. And because they’re people, they can do whatever the f**k they want with their platform. I feel like we start seeing entertainers and creators as not just people, and we start to cartoonize their functions and who they are and what they give to the world.”
She went on to assert that although one can do whatever they want with their platform, there’s a basic responsibility that exists within that freedom.
“If you have a big following you do have a responsibility to not be spreading misinformation, but it’s also your fans responsibility as to how they react to your opinion.”
Ellie holds herself to this responsibility — and goes beyond this very basic obligation. She’s made content geared more towards body positivity and empowerment, although there has been a mixed bag of reactions.
“I try and use my content more for that [empowerment] kind of fight… I posted a video the other day about body hair and the reactions were exactly what I expected — 50/50, mostly supportive comments and then just vomit emojis from 12 year old boys.”
However, she doesn’t take this to heart — and when asked about advice for those worried to put themselves out there online, she echoed what many creators preach.
“I think that one of the things that really holds people back is just this fear of putting yourself out there. And that comes from, you know, the amount of judgement that there can be online, because people can hide behind a screen and go, ‘this is rubbish’, and they’ve never made anything in their life.
My words of encouragement to people is to absolutely be yourself. If all of my stuff has taught me anything, it’s that by being yourself, you are automatically making the best content you can make.”
Something that many creators find to be a major issue once they start creating is obsession over stats — Matt D’Avella himself posted a video the other week talking about his unhealthy obsession with stats. Ellie herself said that she’s not averse to trying to play the algorithm.
“That’s all of social media, figuring out what works and what people connect with, but I never make something that I don’t want to make, and I think that’s really important. I think that’s when you start to lose the soul in what you’re doing.”
We also touched upon the issue of creators and their passion, and more specifically, losing their passion. I always felt that one of the hidden dangers of monetizing your passion is that it can end up feeling like an obligation, a chore per se, and draw away from the original passion that kickstarted it all.
“Yeah, I think that’s probably the biggest challenge for creators now is feeling like you have to be the business person as well… You do have that feeling that you’re not completely free once you start monetizing.
I think it’s a struggle that everyone gets to a certain extent… I think I have such a drive to create, and whether it was monetized or not, I’d still be pushing myself to do this much stuff because I’ve always been like that. Pushing myself through lock-down wasn’t coming from a money point of view, because it wasn’t making me anything.
That came from a personal drive to want to grow and I enjoy making these videos. I think I just have an insane amount of personal drive in that I don’t let myself sit around, I’m always pushing myself to be productive, sometimes to a fault.”
Another huge problem that social media creators and creators in general face is burnout — and it’s slowly being more addressed by creators themselves, with more encouragement to take a break and take some time to “be a waste-man” (to quote Ali Abdaal). Given that Ellie is still “on the come up” so to speak, did she feel the need to constantly be grinding the way “grind culture” recommends?
“I think the most important thing is to listen to when you don’t feel in it. I think what I’m quite good at is if I need time off, I’ll just take it. Like, if that afternoon isn’t vibin’, we don’t do it, and I’m not going to beat myself up for that, because I need that time, because rest is part of work”
And finally, I had to ask — what would the dream song collaboration be?
“I think currently I would love to collab with Still Woozy, it would be so cool… Anderson .Paak [as well], because the talent, the talent in one man… we would make the grooviest funkiest thing ever. And then I absolutely love Duckwrth. I don’t know where you’d put him, but he’s so cool. He dropped an album last year and it was my album of the year. It’s unreal. He’s boss, man. I think working with him would be such a cool experience.”
