“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people!” tweeted Elon Musk yesterday.
The manifestation of said power will be requiring people to pay to get “priority in replies, mentions & search” as well as the “ability to post long video & audio”. Oh, and a verification tick, of course.
There will still be lords and peasants, then: it’s just that the price of becoming a lord will be $8 a month – with some flexibility: “Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity,” added Musk.
His public brainstorm continued with the suggestion that “there will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians”.
This is all highly relevant to musicians: both the popular ones who’ll count as public figures (who decides this and how is yet to be announced), and those further down the pyramid who’ll be mulling whether they can afford to pay $8 a month (or, indeed, whether they can afford NOT to pay it if they want their posts to get decent reach).
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