Does your band still need a Myspace page?

Myspace was once the king of social networks. When it arrived it brought with it someting rather revolutionary: a means for people to create, customise and update their own web pages very easily. Sites that let users do this are now ten-a-penny, but prior to Myspace becoming part of the web mainstream back in 2005-06, most people wanting to set up an online presence had to register a domain, then rely on dedicated software to create web content and FTP it up to a server. Not all punters – or indeed bands – could be arsed with this sort of thing, and Myspace’s content creation/management system (however clunky it may seem in retrospect) arguably represented a real step change in how people used the internet: instead of being passive consumers of content, web users could now generate it easily.

Whatever this meant to Josephine Bloggs (usually the opportunity to create hideous pink flashing backgrounds featuring angels, underpants or twinkling stars) this was a godsend to musicians who didn’t really have web design skills. You might have been in a fantastic band, but you might not have had the means – financial or otherwise – to get your music, photo and bio onto the internet. Myspace came along and changed all that – your band could be online in 30 minutes and spamming unsuspecting Myspace users into submission with friend requests. Soon, musicians no longer developed repetitive strain injury as a result of playing guitar or self-love but from clicking ‘send friend request’ over and over again on Myspace.

In the light of Myspace’s subsequent decline – from 300 million users in 2007 to under 50 million now – a question that we get asked over and over again is this: should I bother with a Myspace page for my band? If even Rupert Murdoch has walked away from it, surely it’s time for my little nu-metal-chillwave-shoegaze outfit to look elsewhere for social network prowess?

Well, despite the decline in Myspace’s popularity, we think that there are some very good reasons for not getting rid of your page. Before you hit the ‘delete account’ button, think about the following.

• A&Rs, managers, journalists and promoters still use it as a key reference point for auditioning out new bands. For all of Myspace’s foibles, when you approach a music industry professional about a new band, you’ll often get the following question: ‘what’s their Myspace address?’
• Likewise with punters – although a music fan may not have a Myspace account themselves, they may still use the network as a way to audition new music. If you recommend a band to a mate, don’t be surprised if you get the reply, ‘I’ll check them out on Myspace’.
• Myspace still gets a lot of eyeballs looking at its music content. And its music features are read by millions. If you or your publicist are approaching Myspace’s editorial team asking for a feature in their influential “New Music Matters” section, but you don’t have a Myspace page, it’s not going to look great, is it?
• Search engines prioritise Myspace pages over a lot of other content. You’ll usually find a band’s Myspace page coming up at the top, or very near the top, of search results. Depending on the name of your band, how obscure you are, or how you’ve optimised your site, this can be a very handy thing.
• If you have a Myspace following, it’s a bit rude just to disappear on them without warning. Even if you’ve been a bit naughty and used friend adding software to increase your follower count, you are likely to have picked up some fans along the way, and not just prostitutes. A dedicated fan can be worth hundreds of pounds over the course of a rock career. Why jettison people who like you?
• The internet is a fickle mistress and situations change incredibly quickly – as the rapid shrinking of Myspace’s user base highlights. Even if a bunch of other social networks seem infinitely more popular right now, remember that they could suffer the same sort of online fate, or – however unlikely it may seem right now – Myspace may reverse its decline in popularity, or morph into something that is still relevant and a useful tools for bands. Nothing is static or assured online.

So, given all the above, you may want to think twice about getting rid of your Myspace page. There are so many ‘syncing’ options between Twitter, Facebook (and your own site, if you use RSS) that there  isn’t really any hassle involved with the upkeep of a Myspace page. If you set things up in the right way, your Myspace page should just reflect whatever’s going on on the site / network you are updating regularly. The bottom line is that it doesn’t really hurt to have a Myspace page; it will help people find your music more easily; and as things stand, you probably lose more than you gain by deleting it.

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Comments

[Eoin Smith]

As a music journalist, I do use MySpace quite a bit when researching bands. However, due to MySpace's new layout and playlisting feature, I find myself increasingly frustrated with the website itself. While MySpace is still a useful tool, it's important for bands to be on other, more reliable, networks too - Reverb Nation, Amazing Tunes, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, etc - as the functionality on those is often FAR superior.