Artists on Twitter

Who could have foreseen the explosion of Twitter? Somehow, the combination of bare bones, bite-sized text, supreme mobility and the chronological feed format made it an infectious and easy stand-in for blogging and social media. In just a few years, it's changed the way we interact online, in politics, entertainment and music. The stranger phenomenon is that some people can be “good” at Twitter – there are personalities out there who understand what it's best for, and subsequently grow an audience of people eager to hear what drips from their brain. The ones who don't take advantage of this intimate and accessible medium are those who let their PR teams run their feeds for announcements and news. The best ones are genuinely entertaining, and lead to a stronger sense of fandom because they not only like the music you produce, but they are intrigued by you as a personality. With so many accounts, real and fake to slog through, these are my broad recommendations for Twitter (other than @vitaminrecords). A non-specific #FollowFriday, if you will.

• @Questlove - From the world famous The Roots, Twitter has been a venue for ?uestlove to put his tremendous music knowledge to use. As an added bonus, it's been the source of controversy for NBC, wherein he has inadvertently caused a stir with backstage pictures or unfortunate intro songs as Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's bandleader.
• @Trent_Reznor - Now that he's won an Oscar and is a big name in film soundtracks, he's officially a big shot in modern music and therefore, any peek into his brain is interesting. Although he's quit Twitter more than once out of online negativity (he's just like us!) he still appears every once in a while to promote something or clue in fans to his latest goings-on.
• @Colinmeloy - Considering how literate The Decemberists are, it's no surprise that frontman Colin Meloy is entertaining in small bites of text. And man, he Tweets a lot. About politics, typefaces, music, pretty much any fully formed thought – which, I guess, is what the medium has always intended.
• @Mountain_Goats - John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, it turns out, is really funny. His feed is often more akin to a stand-up comedian's than a poetic songwriter's. An apt sample: “On your deathbed, you will not say: 'I wish I'd spent more time talking about social media.'”
• @KanyeWest - When Kanye first joined Twitter, it was as close as the young site had come to An Event. And for a while, it was glorious and funny, intentional or not. He's gone away for the most part, but he does come back every few months to tweet a rambling 30 page essay that will make your phone supernova.