Is MySpace Making Some Bands Lazy?
Jimmy at Music Arsenal joins the debate with a caution to artists not to just rely on MySpace as their primary conduit to their fans:
I the I find more often these days that many bands only have a MySpace (or PureVolume or TagWorld) pagerather than an actual band website. When I want to see a band’s upcoming tour instead of going to yourband.com, I have to go to myspace.com/yourband. This may make me sound lazy, but all too often I end up at the wrong band’s MySpace, a MySpace page with 1000 friends but no information or a page so mangled by a page editor that it takes 2 minutes to load. Finally, when the page does load, the layout and colors are so bad it’s completely unreadable.
Has MySpace gotten so big that personal band websites are no longer important? Domain names are cheap, web hosting is inexpensive, and designing your own web page is getting easier all the time.
I’m not saying MySpace isn’t an important marketing tool, but its not the only thing a band should use to promote itself. Hopefully, some MySpace exclusive bands will look into making a website. But if not, please just stop adding so many videos, pictures, animated gifs and funky mouse cursors that I never visit the page again. (Excerpted with permission from Music Arsenal)
I totally agree with you. Used correctly, MySpace is a great tool for connecting with artists and getting the word out about your band or business, but it is no substitute for setting up a proper website which seems to be the norm these days.
I also agree about horrible page designs that take forever to load. I’m on a T1 and some of these pages are S… L…O… W….. I can’t imagine anyone on dial-up having the patience to wait for these pages to download.
When begining to create my page, my COO suggested we add background images and the like to spruce up the page and I was totally against it. What I set up was a simple clean page that conveyed the message about our company and allow anyone on any connection to quickly view our page, though some of the comments tend to get quite large.
My lazy band space blog
Found this post, Is MySpace making bands lazy?, on the Music Arsenal Blog (cool blog, btw) via Hypebot. In a nutshell, his argument is the bands are relying solely on MySpace for their web presence and not doing their own hosted web space, …
MySpace is more like a business card and a mouthpiece kind of site for bands. Bands aren’t going to be able to create the image they want using MySpace. But it has two advantages:
1) Free samples w/o commitment. No need to download files. Just listen, and if you like, add the band.
2) Pimping the latest release, show, video through bulletins (push: info comes to you).
Bands that don’t also have a regular web site miss out on other key promotional opportunities. Mainly stoking the fan base and the hardcore evangelists who will spread word of mouth. Providing forums, pre-sale concert tickets, news bulletins, blogs, free shit and product sales. Look at what bands like Dave Matthews, U2 and Pearl Jam have done (and for new bands, look at OK Go). Bands that don’t have a Web site are missing massive branding opportunities.
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Uploading Photos and Videos to MySpace
Uploading photos to your MySpace account is fairly simple. First you must log into your account and then click on the links that says, “Add/edit photos.” You then receive a warning stating that photos which include nudity, violent or offensive materials or copyrighted images are not permitted. You can then browse through your hard drive to find the desired photo. Photos uploaded to MySpace must be .gif or .jpg format and must be smaller than 600k. Once you find an appropriate photo, click upload and the photo will be added to your account. Once a photo is added you can create a caption for this photo.