Wednesday, October 28, 2009
National Skyline MySpace Adds 'New Analytics Features' for Bands, Internet Quits MySpace
Posted by D Patrick Rodgers on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 12:59 PM
So it all began in an unassuming manner. MySpace was a social networking platform like any other--it wasn't particularly innovative in its approach, but for whatever reason, it was promptly the most popular. In its infancy, the 'Space was merely yet another way to post about the banal events of your shitty life and virtually meet girls with septum piercings who, in real life, turned out to be gargantuan mouth-breathers. And drove Scions. And freaked me out. I digress.
Here's where MySpace garnered its most significant bit of cultural influence: It became the platform for independent musicians. Despite its doddering ineptitude when it comes to positive evolution, it was especially accessible, had a mechanism for streaming songs and was a way to reach thousands of people. But now, as legions of "users" free themselves from the clutches of MySpace Tom's clammy paws, the site's overlords are looking for more ways to keep people using their platform. And now that it's pretty apparent that we've all left for Facebook, MySpace is trying to keep the one thing they have that no one else does: "EVERY FRICKIN' BAND ON THE PLANET." See how after the jump.
Download Squad has a pretty thorough overview of MySpace's new analytics features. Check it:
On the new Artist Dashboard, artists can check out the demographics of their fanbase, including a breakdown of age, gender and location. The Dashboard also includes pageviews and song plays over time, and integrates information from iLike, which MySpace acquired earlier this year.
Andrew Dubber over at Music Think Tank launched into a bit of a diatribe regarding MySpace's impotent attempts to keep musicians hanging around, and he has a pretty intriguing proposal:
I'd like to hereby declare 24th October 2010 Global 'Quit MySpace' Day.That's one year from today. It's a Sunday. Put it on your calendar. Mark it in your diary. And spread the word. Let's give them 12 months to do it right - or we're ALL gone.
I'd like to invite any other music-facing service on the planet, real or as-yet unformed, to step up and take their place as the default home for independent music online. We may be about to create a vacuum. Someone needs to step in to fill it.
I don't necessarily WANT MySpace to fail. The best outcome for this is for musicians to be delighted with the platform. Nobody wants to move all their data, re-upload their songs, and start building up a fanbase (however bogus those numbers actually are) all over again. But if the 'love' shown to artists is as weak and contemptuous as the kind of 'love' that passes for News From MySpace as reported on Download Squad today - then they MUST fail.
There you have it. MySpace is the metaphorical merch girl who supported our band for a while with her trust fund and her euphoric willingness to help, but now the funds are drying up and it's time to move on. Will MySpace heed the call for a better platform? Will people ever move on?
Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
I am curious to know why bands use Myspace? I would particularly enjoy this being answered by people who are in bands. Do they use it as a way of streaming their music in a straightforward / easy manner or do they use it for the "social" aspect of the site - posting tour dates, adding friends, sending out updates, etc.?
I would assume that all of that plays a part but I'm curious which aspect is the predominant one. If it's getting the word out about music then people should be heading to Bandcamp / Soundcloud / Mixcloud / ReverbNation.
like
dislike
I certainly can't speak for all bands (or can I?), but the motivation for using MySpace is pretty basic: At one point, MySpace had more active users than any other social networking site, AND it had means for streaming songs. Friendster and FB never had that, and sites like Last.FM, Virb, Bandcamp, et cetera either don't have non-musician user interface, or are just plain unpopular.
Part of MySpace's appeal was that every time your band posted a new song or a bulletin or what have you, it went straight to your friends and fans. It was comprehensive, and people were comfortable and familiar with the interface. It was the most popular social networking site in the world, and it was easy, accessible and mostly helpful for bands to use. If Bandcamp instituted Facebook-like interface for non-musician members (i.e. dumbed itself down), if Last.FM became more popular (Saint Happenin'), or if Facebook allowed bands to stream songs (hopefully?), MySpace would be completely out of the picture.
Facebook DOES allow bands to stream songs (see Menomena side project Ramona Falls example here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ramona-Falls/96732447618?v=app_19935916616) I just think it's not setup for just ANY band to do it, you have to have 100+ fans before it even becomes an option.
Last.fm is too specific in its scope to ever be as popular of a social network. Since it serves such a specific purpose people will never flock there for real "social networking" in the sense of Facebook or Myspace. I guess the same applies to Reverb Nation or SoundCloud or Mixcloud, etc.
As for Bandcamp - I would argue that the interface is ridiculously simple - way moreso than the MySpace interface. That's coming from a fairly nerdy perspective but I will stick to my guns on it.
I see the appeal that Myspace ONCE had - but I guess I wonder why someone would use it now instead of cobbling together their own website using tools from all these other places. Setting up a Tumblr or something can't be that complicated to that lay person can it?
Michael, we're bloggers. WTF do you and I know about the layperson?
Fact is, MySpace felt safe and effective to the average band, because they knew all of their friends (and every human being in the world) checked MySpace every single day. They knew when they announced a show or a new track that people saw it.
Yes, Bandcamp is simple. But how many average folks "check" Bandcamp every day? Sure, linking to it is easy, but it doesn't provide some sort of live feed for members that people can view consistently.
If I'm interested in hearing a band, I type their name into the Google search engine and add "myspace." It's a near flawless way to hear immediately a song by that band. There are probably lots of other words I could type after the artists' name and achieve the same result, but I'd estimate that few have as close to a 100 percent success rate as myspace does. That said, I deleted my MySpace account a long time ago, but I'm also very very very slow to adapt to new Internettings. I doubt that I'll ever follow anyone on Twitter.
That was mostly intended as an answer to Michael's question about why bands still use MySpace. Probably because there are too many people like me.
"it doesn't provide some sort of live feed for members that people can view consistently."
untrue. it provides an RSS feed for each artist that can be added to, say, Facebook or Last.fm, etc. etc. That's getting a bit too far into the nerdy realm of things but it does have a way to show updates to the site.
But I do agree - Bandcamp is not a social network. It is a very highly functional tool for streaming / selling / distributing music. It's not trying to be Myspace. My point was that its not that hard to setup and can be integrated into any number of other places to get your music heard.
Matt S makes a great point tho - Myspace and music searches are now synonymous. It's just damn unfortunate that it's such a ghetto. No amount of demographic data can correct that. They have ads INSIDE the player for goodness sake! The music stops until you close the ad! WTF!
I guess we just have to wait until Facebook fan pages take over and it becomes the new go to spot. And then after that we can all move over to whatever the next big thing is. Orkut maybe?
To answer Michael's question, Myspace is a pretty good marketing tool. Aside from this, it is fun corresponding with people! To respond to D. Patrick Rodgers questioning the usefulness of demographic info, it lets you know where to concentrate your efforts with regard to friend adds. I knew my demo was 18-34, 70% female, but not every band knows how to do marketing research. Another thing I do is browse people based on location. I target secondary radio markets which one day will become my touring markets. In summary, Myspace is a mini version of radio, it's all about impressions and name recognition.
It's good that Myspace is branding themselves as the band social networking. Crawl out from the shadow of Facebook.
also, if i could have one wish, i would wish that the building holding all of myspace's servers would get hit by a fucking meteor and burn to the ground. fuck that dumb site. their player sounds like the worst type of shit anyways. fuck 'em
@Corman: I see your point, but are there really bands who approach garnering a fan base that way? I can't say I know any young, independent bands or artists who think to themselves, "I need to know what age group and gender like me the most in order to court that demographic directly." Fact is, nine times out of 10 a band is going to know exactly what sort of person likes their music. And even if these analytics features help you realize you have a fan base you didn't know about, are you honestly going to start adding "friends" based on those parameters? Every band I know that still uses MySpace basically just adds everyone they can in hopes that they'll all check them out.
Interesting point about the secondary radio markets, though. That's an approach I hadn't heard yet.
myspace, for the most part, sucks ass. however, the site still ranks enormously high in traffic and it is still the number one source for users to find and discover music. there is no point to try to communicate with your friends on myspace anymore, but nobody comes close to offering the ease of finding artists, recordings and especially back-catalogues now. i'm interested in seeing where it goes, if anywhere. in a related story, kings of leon have 32,000 plays today on their myspace player.
2 D. Patrick: well, that's how record labels do marketing. Knowing your audience is sometimes tough. A lot of bands get dropped because the label guessed wrong.
One way that the stats might help you is the breakdown of plays by state. I was getting a surprising number of plays in Colorado, so I decided to add people there and look around for bands.
As far as who to add, I need to know what city they're in so I can invite them to gigs. I ignore those who don't list a name and city. A lot of bands add famous artists, models, porn stars, etc. which doesn't help if you're trying to find people who might go see a show.
Sounds like these analytics features are designed specifically for musicians of your very ilk. Very thoughtful, proactive artists who are good at self-promotion and general hustling. Guess the fact of the matter is all of the bands I know have about 15 percent of the work ethic you do. You should give seminars on teaching bands how to care. You know...while still retaining the essential "I don't care" aesthetic.
Vote here for best Band of the Week
Slideshows
Top Commenters
