Digital Music News - I Want You to Notice When I'm Not Around: What Happens After MySpace Music?

I Want You to Notice When I'm Not Around: What Happens After MySpace Music?

Wednesday, July 07, 2010
by presnikoff

The future of MySpace continues to point southward, and that spells a difficult fate for MySpace Music. This sounds like bad news for bands: the MySpace Music experience has always been clunky, but it still features the largest collection of band profiles, lots of curated content, and even offline gigs. But despite the obvious value, would a world without MySpace really make a difference to musicians, labels, and marketing teams?

The answer is probably not, thanks to heavy overlap among competing music services. Sure, MySpace Music is a default destination under distress, but digital distributors, bands, and labels are mostly thinking across a range of different outlets. "MySpace serves a purpose to bands, just like Facebook does, just like last.FM, WordPress and Twitter does... the list goes on," commented Nayfe SJ of Chailo Sim. "One day MySpace will probably be over. Musicians will still be writing music though, and they'll get it online any way they can... wherever the latest site happens to be."

Of course, digital distributors are already there, and they have been for years. Everyone from Tunecore to the Orchard think across a broad range of outlets, and being everywhere is critical for bands wanting to connect with fans. That seems to be the strategy that will stick around, even when the sites themselves do not.

Paul Resnikoff, Publisher.

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Comments (6)

Simon Adams - MyMusicSuccess Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Great post Paul.

It is quite amazing how MySpace has continued to be an essential tool for the independent musician, even though it is uber restrictive in its layouts and tools. However for some reason we all feel we have to be there, whether its just sheer numbers or the feeling that we just "have to have a MySpace presence".

I think that independent bands will continue to have a MySpace presence, but will probably reduce the priorities of tending to it lower down the list than other social networks.

I suppose it comes down to the fact that MySpace were first on the scene and just didn't keep up. Whether it will die out completely, only time will tell!

Simon

Simon Adams
Co-Founder
MyMusicSuccess
http://www.mymusicsuccess.com

CraigDiPaolo Wednesday, July 07, 2010

I just find the MySpace experience to be so so painful. There are way too many bad UI issues all over the place, and it's not a good experience for bands or artists - so, maybe it'll be good to move on.

Maxwellian Wednesday, July 07, 2010

yup. Nayfe nailed it. His music's pretty good too, esp. if you like Jack Johnson, surfing, etc.

Matt Thursday, July 08, 2010

Yeah, it's a massive pain to use, but one thing that the other services don't seem to do as well as myspace is search engine placement.

Google most band names and you'll find their myspace within the top 5 results, for the others you have to add the word "band" to achieve this. It makes it a lot easier for people to track down small bands or those that aren't web-savvy.

Radiopotato Thursday, July 08, 2010

Until something far more efficient and less "clunky" comes around, band managers/promoters will still put MySpace as an obligatory way to get the music out to the fans or for people to discover. It's still considered necessary, but only for lack of better alternatives.

While I'm amazed people still leave comments on the myspace pages, you are right as there is power in bands being everywhere they can.

The good news is it leaves a gaping hole for innovators to design something sleeker, easier to use, comprehensive, around social networking. Maybe I'll figure it out!

Thanks for the article-

Brandon Friday, July 09, 2010

I think the only real value add myspace offers right now is that Google brings Myspace to the top of the search results.

So many other platforms exist right now for artists to get there music and message out there. It is relatively easy to create a Wordpress or Tumblr site and add streaming music using a service like Soundcloud. Bandcamp is also another great service for bands to stream/distribute music.

The above allows so much more customization and freedom, all bands should really take a little extra time to create a more professionally branded presence.

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