A New New MySpace Is Coming
Following some serious staff shakeups and layoffs, comes word that MySpace is going to reposition itself yet again as an entertainment portal.
In a brief interview with the Wall Street Journal, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said MySpace needs to be re-focused "as an entertainment portal." Mr. Murdoch described his vision for MySpace as a place where "people are looking for common interests." If plans continue to follow Murdoch's vision, music would become even more important to the social networking site.
How would you remake MySpace?
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Do we care though? Like, does any band really want to have to deal with myspace again? The alternitives are much more userfriendly and are not owned and run by the majors and newscorp.
Does anyone still WANT to use myspace?
Get rid of anyone that hasn’t logged in since at least January 2009, preferrably June 2009 – music or regular account. Delete their profiles, Rupert!
I agree with mike, as to actually maintaining the site. But I see some benefits of myspace, such as the fact that it is established as a huge social network. The other half of the question is why would we (diy musicians) limit ourselves to the underground half of the world. Why can’t we take both sides, as long as we are doing it ourselves, and really knock the labels out of our markets. All of them.
Mike, you’re 100% right. There are WAY to many outdated and old profiles on MySpace. If someone hasn’t logged on in 2 or 3 months, their account SHOULD be deleted.
As for Owen, sorry man, but I agree with epitomyofjay here. Why wouldn’t a musician continue to use MySpace alongside all the other sites out there? Especially considering the fact that MySpace still gets more hits most of the other music sites combined?
I LOVE Myspace. I find it to still be the best alternative out there for diy and independent artists and musicians. It allows people to reach out to a very big community.
I really don’t get the point Owen is making. Why do we always have to be rebellious? Can’t we just take advantage of all instruments out there to get our music and art out to the world? Being “alternative” every single time isn’t productive.
p.s. I think they should delete accounts that haven’t been used for the past year.
I agree with A Boy With Glasses (above^).
Furthermore, I have been saying all year that myspace is going to continue to morph into a music, arts and entertainment hub (Facebook taking front seat as the personal social networking platform of choice).
While many bands don’t care to “deal with myspace” (Owen Kelly, above^), it is but just one of many ways to promote one’s band/project — it’s a free webpage where the media interface is almost universally understood, and there are millions of pre-existing potential fans ALREADY THERE. It just seems like a convenient situation for the artists and the advertisers who support the site. I don’t really see what the big deal is. If the virtual infrastructure is there, use it; if a better alternative comes along…. well, we will know when everybody goes there!
I think myspace has intelligently recognized that they’ve lost a hold of the personal social networking niche, but still have an arguable monopoly on the music/entertainment market. The site’s move to strategically downsize their staff and to zero in on their corner of the market is a logical one (and could very well be what preserves its existence into the next decade).
Although I haven’t had a ton of love for Myspace and its somewhat dated and clunky interface over the past few years, I’m willing to take a look at what they have to offer.
Don’t get me wrong, if you have fans on a service don’t abandon it. If your fans prefer to connect with you on that service, so be it.
However, MySpace is just so antiquated and well ugly. Poor design and usability has made way for other services to knock myspace off its throne. Soundcloud has the potential to provide significantly better streaming than myspace and can blend in nicely with most social networks.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/soundcloud-threatens-myspace-as-music-destination-for-twitter-era/
Myspace does dwarf the competition in terms of traffic, however it also dwarfs the competition in terms of userbase, so whilst you may in fact be correct it doesn’t appear that relevant.
I guess the point I’m making, or rather the question I was asking was, does anyone see significant conversions from myspace, compared to other websites? And are you okay with the fact that the revenue spilt from the ads goes to the majors?
I’m a venue owner and I deleted my MySpace page awhile back. I encourage anyone who cares about the media landscape to do likewise. ReverbNation is free, has better web tools than MySpace, and has all of the same functionality and then some.
Best yet, it doesn’t support Rupert Murdoch and his media-overconsolidating ways, as well as his pals at Fox News (which he also owns.) I will not give any of his media properties one more second of my time than I absolutely have to.
WHY use MySpace? – simply because, for many demos (county music being a big one) the fans are still using it. MySpace is clunky and horrid and its numbers are falling, but it is still an incredibly viable way to reach your consumer base – still too big to ignore, unfortunately.
Thanks, I new I was not alone it leaving myspace.
“an entertainment portal” where “people are looking for common interests,” translated: A user is only there to consume, buy and to be marketed to. Welcome to the sit down shut up future. BULLSHIT!
Isn’t that what the consumers want, anyway?
Good counter-arguments, Owen Kelly. I am a new Soundcloud user (http://soundcloud.com/Evan_Exempt) and definitely agree on that point. (Thank you for the interesting article link, btw).
I am not sure what dwarfing the competition in terms of “userbase” refers to… Can I make a guess? Are you saying that while myspace runs a good deal of traffic, it isn’t necessarily the kind of traffic a particular band or artist might be looking for?
(Please correct me.)
And as for “conversions”, I must confess to being very ignorant of statistics surrounding these claims, so I’ll just have to digress on this one.
At this point I see myspace as a convenient, handy, familiar URL to advertise to people when I say, “Hey, check out my new mix!” While Soundcloud may well become the new choice of the band/DJ/producer page elite (I much prefer its interface and options), the crucial social hub component (which made Myspace and Facebook so successful) must be there in order to generate the traffic necessary to keep the artists centralized. (However, I’ve noticed that Soundcloud can run as kind of a ‘plug-in’ on any social networking platform that will let you install a widget, which I think could be the thing that will secure its long-term success.)
And regarding myspace’s ad revenue being split with major media conglomerates: I believe that these entitie$ are always going to be around, to one great extent or another, whether us few indie-minded folks boycott them or not. I saw a film called ‘Rip!: A Remix Manifesto’, recently, and I must say that the greed of the mass-media machine is in many ways sickening. Yet, at the same time, I don’t feel that anything short of a revolution is going to have a significant impact on this fact of living in a corporate society — people/organizations with money OWN SHIT. But if we can use it for free, why not?
I’m not an activist; I’m a DJ and a commentator.
Thanks for reading my rant. Just bookmarked your blog, Mr. Kelly.
Bookmark the one I write for: http://www.postmusic.org
– Evan Exempt
Thanks. So by userbase I do yes mean they have a significantly larger number of people using the service. The link escapes me, but from what i can remember when myspace first relaunched its Myspace Music section with major labels on board its conversions were very very low. SO yes, not the type of fans you would *typically* be looking for.(any fan paying or not, is a good fan though)
By conversions I’m talking about how many people buy song after hearing it on myspace. Also note that online conversions for music is becoming and increasing immeasurable metric, and thus far less important than say, being heard.
Twitter users are far more likely to buy music according to this http://www.appscout.com/2009/06/study_twitter_users_more_likel.php
Soundcloud is very much a decentralised network, you can start on there, but you can also spread your songs around the web etc. Myspace as you said was a crucial hub for musicians. But why? Its a very familiar band, and it have proven expectations. When you wanted to hear a band you went to their myspace page, because every band is on myspace and every band has a few songs uploaded.
But we are increasing stepping away from myspace as we see better more useful alternatives crop up.
Bookmarked 🙂
To me, the central failing of MySpace is that it takes spam as its primary model of social interaction. For whatever reason — clunky design, ubiquitous ads, etc. — whatever true connections I’ve made with fans there have been dwarfed by the inundation of cold-calling exhortations to “check out my tracks!” without even a gesture of genuine reciprocity, or even the slightest concern about whether the music being pushed on me bears any resemblance to the kind of music I actually like to listen to.
Deleting a myspace as a venue owner is a bad decision. Having a myspace is a great way to get #1 in google search for your venue. When I’m searching venues on google, I generally click the myspace link and then look for a venue website. Myspace is reliable in that you generally know you are being directed to something music related whereas website listings are often vague and don’t come up early in searches. At the very least, keep a myspace with a calendar, contact information, a google maps link, and links to your website.
Thanks, OJK. Followed you on twitter, too — I’m @evanexempt and @postmusic
Myspace needs to streamline. Profiles full of egotistical crap are done with. People with glittery-html have long ago lost the enjoyment they got out of those profiles.
The emphasis needs to be on cleaning profiles and making people and interests more searchable. In a way myspace needs to become a twitter facebook hybrid where simple term and interest searches meet public profiles ready for networking(b/c facebook only encourages networking within people you know but twitter has limitations on the amount of information you can give out)
Where facebook gives connectivity to people who already know each other and twitter is successful in networking, myspace needs to bridge the gap of realtime networking and the clean profiles of facebook.
Myspace personal accounts can learn a lot from smart myspace artist accounts. Unfortunately artists have web designers to keep the pages clean. Myspace needs to eliminate a lot of crap from personal profiles and do away with their horrible link bars above the pages with hundreds of links and cut that down to just a few, direct traffic towards better hubs on myspace(music, networking, search, realtime search)
Jon, I hope you realize that I’m agreeing with you here. “Why wouldn’t a musician continue to use MySpace” is what I said. I totally agree that MySpace is still 100% necessary for any artist that’s trying to get their music out there!
Owen:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly a defender of MySpace. It’s just that in terms of getting new music out to a potential fanbase, they still have the most traffic, so there’s no way you can really ignore them.
The point you make about them also having a large database is good, but the fact is that it’s not up to MySpace or any other social network to make an artist stand out from their competition. That’s up to the artist.
Conversions – I’ve had more sales and more links tracked back to MySpace than I have had from any other site, outside of my own. And yeah, I’m cool with MySpace sharing their revenue with the majors. That’s one of the things that keeps the MySpace free to use for the rest of us.
I don’t think the goal should be to use MySpace for earnings, anyway, so much as an artist should just use it for marketing purposes.
Soundcloud, isn’t that more of a delivery service, than a social network? Wouldn’t Soundcloud be closer in comparison to SendSpace than MySpace?
Elise:
Very good point about Reverbnation. I use that too, and they’re very effective. but they still don’t have the traffic of a MySpace. Why not just keep both?
I hate Fox News too, by the way. no disagreement from me there. But hell, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them for the access they can provide to new customers, does it?
When I started using myspace in 2004, I didn’t care about Fox news then. All i care about is reaching people with common interests and setting my own persona for my music (along with getting a general response for my occasional demos). It’s a great way to avoid the Elitists who hang out in forums and review sites, and I don’t have to answer to some radio station in another state to get airtime. So what’s the big deal guys? Who cares if it’s “Ugly” or “Corporately Owned”?
There are other sites like reverbnation, and Facebook, but as a musician and a DJ, I haven’t had very much luck with either. People aren’t looking for what they never heard of, and Myspace is a sure-fire way to reach new fans (in your own town) who aren’t aware of what you’re doing, BEFORE the elitists jerks in the artsy scene get to them.
I market to NORMAL people and if those people are okay with myspace, then so am I.
I forgot to add:
If they get rid of the “fake” profile that are most likely porn sites, I really be happy. i also would like to see them focus on more indie bands and give stats as to how you match up in your area (like Reverbnation) as well ashelp me find fans by their interests rather than by chance.