The recent number one ‘Lets get ready to rumble’ by the nations favourite duo Ant & Dec, who originally released the single under the names PJ and Duncan, has not only caused a media frenzy but reinforced the power of Social Media. Let’s face it, the song didn’t do brilliantly 19 years back, it reached number 9 at its best, but after performing it recently on their ITV show ‘Saturday night takeaway’ social media sites went into overdrive, and thousands of viewers went straight onto iTunes to download the track, initially taking them to number one on the world’s biggest online music store and then the UK Singles charts.

A few years back the only way to promote your music and get it heard was through radio and good old fashioned marketing. Yes, we do still have radios, and some aspects of traditional marketing are still being used, but the majority of new music you’ll hear today is likely to have evolved through the help of social media.

It was around 2003 that Social Media entered the scene, providing an innovative way for music to be heard globally through the internet. The Arctic Monkeys are a perfect example, being one of the first groups to become famous through Social Media, predominately through their fans support via MySpace, who went on to create a dedicated page for them. Shortly to follow was Lily Allen who created her own MySpace profile to make her recordings public, which eventually led on to her music getting aired on BBC1 radio, spiralling on from there.

The beauty of Social Media is it allows artists without any professional representation to produce music on their own, reaching fans through sites like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. The raw nature of this process means artists are not only outing their talent to the world, they’re at the mercy of their biggest critics, their fans. This isn’t always a positive move for the artists that aren’t cutting the mustard, and can quite often lead to bitter disappointment.

This probably would’ve been the case if Ant & Dec were unknown to us and trying to make their break with ‘Ready to rumble’ in this day and age. Luckily the nation’s fondness of the pair, and support via social media sites, resulted in a number one and a somewhat baffled Duo, quoting about their fans on Twitter: ‘You lot are daft as a brush!!

The fact is, Social Media brings ‘Power to the People’ and demonstrates the domination of our modern society.