In a recent conversation with Metal Blast, Canadian musician and producer Devin Townsend shared candid insights on how social media has evolved beyond just a promotional tool for artists. It’s now, he said, essential for engagement and, increasingly, for monetization in the music world. Townsend, known for his deeply personal and complex work, spoke about the challenging shift toward constant online visibility, especially for artists who may not have started their careers in the digital age.
Reflecting on his own experiences, Townsend remarked (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): "I think it's something that a lot of people in the music industry, specifically in sort of the positions that I reside in, sort of mid-level in a small genre, there's a lot of people that just refuse to do it. And I can understand that because if you weren't raised in that environment, it seems like it's in direct opposition to why you got into it in the first place. And I can certainly sympathize with that sentiment. However, the reality of it is that it's simply what it takes at this point to create engagement with an audience that is so distracted that the choice is ours."
Townsend, who took a two-year break from social media to escape the pressures of constant content creation, described the demands of a daily online presence as mentally taxing: "I find that the position I'm in right now because I took time off — I've taken about two years off of social media, where prior to that I was very active on it — but I just found that the exhaustion that comes from these constant updates is just… It's less even the workload that goes into creating content like this, it's more of the implication, at least for me, that what I do is so important that it warrants that amount of silly videos.”
He noted that it’s less about the workload and more about the self-importance it sometimes implies: “Like every morning — I woke up this morning and I got requests for another five or ten videos of me doing stupid shit… But I think the thing is you either do it or you don't. And that's entirely your prerogative. But my work is so important to me that in order to continue doing it, I have started to reconcile that I need to really get that sort of part of my world in gear.”
While acknowledging the frustration some feel about social media’s demands, Townsend has started to accept that it’s part of the modern artist’s reality. For him, it’s become a necessary compromise to keep doing the work he loves. Yet, he predicts that many in his generation may step away altogether, simply because they don’t see the value in this new way of engaging with fans.
“And I think that the people who hate it and the people that I relate to that they're, like, 'Oh, dude, this shit is so annoying,' they're probably not gonna be on those platforms in the first place. So I think that whatever sense of humiliation comes from dancing on one foot for [some website is] something that you just have to get on with, man. And I'm currently in the process of reconciling this change because it happened much quicker than a lot of us expected and I think there's gonna be a lot of people from my generation that will just be left behind because they just have no desire to do so or don't see the importance of doing so. But regrettably, there is an importance in it."
