Can a band really become popular based on MySpace?

- complete strangers have asked me about my music
- complete strangers have inquired about releasing my music
- I've gotten to talk to other musicians who I didn't know before
- a bunch of random people sent me friend invites

so, on the whole: couldn't hurt

lol @ 'top 8'

Yes I know, that's why I said "like old mp3.com" which was dominated by artists that were already on major labels.

That being said, I do find that it is a good way to keep tabs on the different people whose work I am interested in.

(not soon enough, though.)

yeah i was gonna say...

hello, one of them was me, yesterday (but not through MySpace)

An interesting, somewhat related convo:
http://www.thenoiseboard.com/lofiversion/index.php/t76833.html

It would be cool to see a neural map of MySpace bands based on their respective friendbases - a visual representation of how certain bands' audiences overlap and intersect.

MySpace profile hits / song plays / # of friends don't mean diddley in the real world though, if they're not backed by actual interest by a dedicated group of fans.

PM: I notice you have a pretty popular site on Myspace.

Arctic Monkeys: We don't know about that, either.

PM: So that's not you guys?

Arctic Monkeys: No, no. The other day someone said to us, "I looked at your profile on Myspace." I said, "I don't even know what Myspace is." [When we went number one in England] we were on the news and radio about how Myspace has helped us. But that's just the perfect example of someone who doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. We actually had no idea what it was.

so, on the whole: couldn't hurt

I actually, surprisingly, just sold a song due to it being posted on MySpace. Just some solo folksy finger picking shit that i recorded on my Mac, but Albertsons (the Supermarket chain) picked it up and gave me a nice fatty check--corporate whore that i am. It has made me a believer in the power of Myspace..if only slightly.

haha, I actually emailed you back, but it bounced! the answer is it's not out yet, but hopefully soon

So I'm just hoping: :)
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=113305236

geeeenius!

Hahah. :-)

Well yeah, in seriousness, this is one of the things I was wondering (can a band that myspams you ever gain real credibility in your ears?)

Also yeah, the majority of my band's friends are other bands, and probably a slight majority of those are bands we don't actually know. I do sometimes reject those people in extremely egregious cases of spam, like where it's obvious they didn't even take a second to check out your music or when they use your comments section to post ads.

lesson in how a friend who does a pop song for a joke ends up doing a pop song which has been stuck in my head for a week now

Do you ever read any of the content of a thread beyond the title before posting?

does Ultragrrl's count?
just wondering.

A lot of renowned 18th and 19th century classical composers couldn't either. There is a lot more to music than getting people moving together on some floor.

But, I doubt myspace will propel them to fame. I think their performances in Central Park are probably doing more for them.

Except, if one reads the thread, they are not namechecked - each of them is proposed as an example of the phenomenon, but then debunked by subsequent posters. If you really believe that the Arctic Monkeys became popular based on Myspace, then supply your reasoning, and explain why it supercedes the drummer's own assertion that they didn't even know what Myspace is.

A lot of renowned 18th and 19th century classical composers couldn't either.

That's just nonsense Geir. Name 3.

No room for MySpace now that we have our heads in the SoundClouds
Brian Boyd

HOW DO YOU go, in five short years, from being the world’s most popular social networking site to an unloved and rarely visited dinosaur that is now being sold off in a fire sale? Just asks the peeps at MySpace, whose rise and fall is dramatic even by today’s fast-forward standard.

This week News Corp (MySpace’s owner) announced it was washing its hands of the once great game-changing site – or, as the company put it in corporate speak: “Now is the right time to attempt to place the social network under a new owner.”

You sort of knew it would all end in tears during MySpace’s peak years of 2006-2007, when the site had a staggering 100 million numbers and was kicking the crap out of Facebook in the social networking charts. That’s when News Corp grandly announced that MySpace would spell the end of record companies.

Every second day something arrives into Revolver’s inbox saying something new will change the music world irrevocably and mean the end of the old ways of doing things. Hundreds of these hyperventilating schemes with “major financial benefactors” now lie in the web’s recycle bin.

Their PR was good. Lazy journalists wrote about how MySpace broke acts such as Lily Allen – the same Lily Allen who was signed to a long-term record deal before she even thought of shoving some of her songs on to MySpace.

It’s the old Radiohead wheeze of releasing their In Rainbows for free and waiting for the seismic consequences it would have for the industry. But the only reason Radiohead could release In Rainbows for free was because a big nasty label had ploughed millions into the band so they could get to the position to do what they did (and, incidentally, they now regret doing so).

MySpace had only two functions: you could listen to songs (or snippets thereof) for free, and it made A&R people go from a semi- comatose working life to a full- comatose working life. Previously these preposterous people would actually have to go out to indie dumps to run the rule over shouty 17-year-olds. With MySpace all they had to do was flick through the “most rated” unsigned bands and go “let’s spend £5 million on this lot”.

But the site never evolved. It didn’t get faster when it needed to, and when Facebook outstripped it in terms of numbers it just sulked. YouTube got critical mass, Twitter arrived and now SoundCloud is viewed as the new MySpace.

True, MySpace did succeed in being the first big site to offer bands a free online presence where they could “interact” with fans and stalkers and plug their live shows. But, like Bebo and Friends Reunited, it became too mainstream and too ubiquitous. For an industry that prides itself on grassroots discovery, rebelliousness and outsider status, MySpace was just too vanilla.

There can never be a one-stop shop for the music industry – there are too many niches, genres and tribal internecine wars for that to ever happen – and the fragmented state of today’s online “breaking bands” world reflects this truism.

SoundCloud is where the indie heads are at now. It’s linked up with The Hype Machine (the site that gives the I-love-new-music- regardless-of-how-shit-it-is bloggers most of their content). There’s also, depending on tastes, ideologies and current fashionable status, Bandcamp, Moontoast, Buzznet, Disrupt, FanBridge, Nimbit, TuneCore and about 150 million others.

Bye bye MySpace. Thanks for the six weeks in 2006 when you were something approaching cool, relevant and radical, but you’re damaged goods now. You’ll probably end up being bought by Tesco.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2011/0211/1224289499085.html

But the only reason Radiohead could release In Rainbows for free was because a big nasty label had ploughed millions into the band so they could get to the position to do what they did (and, incidentally, they now regret doing so).

I didn't know they were regretting that now.

lol

The title of this thread is so 2006.

there's a ton of bands that have like 10,000 myspace friends that couldn't get 30 people out to a bar or club.

A lot of renowned 18th and 19th century classical composers couldn't either. There is a lot more to music than getting people moving together on some floor.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, October 20, 2006 8:11 PM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hah!

Myspace was great for bands imo in terms of booking and making connections way better than Facebook

yeah it was important for my band at the time, at least connection making. it's how we were able to establish relationships with our first two labels.