MySpace - Maybe?

MySpace has launched a little teaser video to let us know that the new owners have revamped the look and the functionality and that a relaunch is on the way.

We'd all dismissed this once almighty platform (with our advice being just to keep a basic presence there) but maybe we've been too hasty and perhaps it can rebuild itself as a definitive destination for music lovers, and therefore for artists.

We'll see.

 

But, there seems to be some excitmenent amongst the DIY musician fraternity as this post from Music Ally says:

When advertising firm Specific Media bought Myspace – complete with investment from Justin Timberlake – it’s fair to say the most common reaction was a shrug. Dying brand, no chance of a comeback.

Yet if you thought of Myspace less as a falling social network, and more as (potentially) the largest music discovery site in the world, there was a glimmer of hope. Well, a video teaser of the new Myspace has fuelled that hope.

As one heavily-retweeted Twitter user put it: “Instagram + Pinterest + Windows 8 + Justin Timberlake = SexyBack”. It’s very beautiful, heavy on images, and light on clutter. Music remains a key ingredient too, with mixes, trending artists and songs, a radio option and a whole section spotlighting ‘This week’s Top Fans’.

Besides the obvious Pinterest comparison, we’re seeing elements of Vevo and music discovery site TheSixtyOne, as well as iPad app Aweditorium. It’s a world away from previous incarnations of Myspace, and even – whisper it – makes Facebook’s artist pages look a little old-hat.

Check the video here

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What's the best online site for bands post-MySpace?

Amanda wrote a book on using MySpace as a central part of your music marketing - and it was, even just two short years ago.

Sure, other things were sneaking up and stealing traffic from it, but you still had to be on it.

Do you now?

It's kind of up to you  - as we've looked at in various posts in the last few months.

Everybody is saying that MySpace is dead - and that may well prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The key for me is that there is no longer any interaction there. It's so full of spam and devoid of any human interaction (now that all the everyday users have bolted), that it seems pointless to focus any effort on it.

However, there is still traffic - see this report from Ignite Social Media. Sure, it's fallen off a cliff, but it's still huge. So, that, plus the way that Google still ranks MySpace so highly, means that I would advise every band to maintain a profile for now, with an email widget to collect fan's details and current music and tour dates. It's an EPK that you should now set and forget.

Don't forget as well that MySapce is a tool for bands to use to find gigs, promoters and other industry help - you can still trawl it yourself to uncover other bands you can play with and venues to play at, but that is truly about it for now.

BUT, point your fans eleswhere whenever you can!

And that's where these two posts come in.

They both look at whether there is a replacement site - and the answer is that there isn't!

You need to maintain your own site and a profile wherever your fans might find you and want to interact - but keep it manageable. I'd say no more than 4 or 5 where you have a full-on presence.

This piece from AltPress espouses the multi-part approach:

“So as an artist and as a platform, you want to create the most convenient user experience,” he says. “This means the least clicks, the least bugs, the least scrolling, the least clutter. I think the combination of Facebook and the three hosting services earlier mentioned do a great job at that.” The nature of the internet tends toward decentralization, so a site like Myspace—which was at one point the one-stop shopping portal for music fans and bands—was bound to become fragmented. “What we see now with Facebook is not a centralized approach,” says Grasmayer. “It's the integration of fragments: YouTube, Bandcamp, Twitter, SoundCloud... they're all fragments put together.”

Whereas, this piece from MetalSucks backs Bandcamp as the real alternative.

Read them both and take their opinions on board, but remember that you need to be where your fans are. Go to them rather than expecting them to come to you.

You're stuck with MySpace, for a while yet

This is a great article on DigitalMusicNews that I only spotted thanks to @Buzzsonic.

I'd urge you to read it but don't miss the comments as there's a lively debate about the article's conclusion going on all the way down the page.

Even with the rise of artist service companies, few are positioned to replicate what is perhaps MySpace's biggest asset: its role as the musician's calling card. The myspace.com/bandname URL is a common convention most bands adhere to and more consumers recognize. Chances are good that the piano man at your neighborhood bar has a MySpace page, as do the world's most successful acts. While combining a number of APIs and widgets on an artist's homepage can achieve the same functionality of MySpace, few have the potential to achieve the URL ubiquity that MySpace has.

Read the piece and the comments here.

Although I wish it wasn't so - I agree that all sensible artists should retain a MySpace presence, even now. It needn't be much more than an up to date information page that points back to your own site, unless your act knows that it's fans would still want MySpace to be the primary point of contact (true for less and less artists today). 

I think it will become less important in the next year as it's SEO usefulness dies away, but the new ReverbNation tools mean that you can at least try to maintain a relationship with the fans that want to visit you there.