Beyond MySpace
It’s a real shame to hear that so many people who used to work for MySpace have now been “restructured”. But it’s not surprising. MySpace remained the Fisher Price social network while the rest of the web moved to Meccano.
This is nowhere more true than in music, the original lifeblood of MySpace. If you’re an artist, having a MySpace account now is second (well, tenth really) to having a SoundCloud, Root Music, Bandcamp and/or Last.fm page.
I’m not here to damn MySpace. Other people will do that. And it does a good enough job of showing you why it’s not worth using almost as soon as you sign up. What I’m interested in is what happens now.
There’s a music industry analogy here. MySpace became the Universal Records of the online music space. What we’re seeing now is a lot of interesting independents springing up, the XL Recordings of the web. There is no longer one destination (there never was - though I’m guilty of selling Last.fm, where I was PR manager, in that way). There are lots of smaller destinations that artists can harness in order, ultimately, to push fans to their own website - or, more likely, their Facebook page.
Is this a good thing? Speaking as a musician, it certainly makes it more interesting to present your music. Sites like The Sixty One, and a new platform called Viinyl, are using the web as the format. You’re not releasing an MP3, you’re releasing Viinyl. The URL becomes your 7 inch.
What happens when there’s too many of these indie platforms to keep track of? If I want to put my music online right now, I can choose to use Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Reverbnation, Viinyl, Last.fm, The Sixty One, Tunecore, etc etc. Are we going to get lost in all this noise? Maybe someone needs to start aggregating all this content - ah, but then we’re back in a MySpace-like scenario.
Ultimately, MySpace is leaving a big hole. The Lily Allen/Arctic Monkeys success-via-MySpace myth is just that - a myth. But the site did focus attention, however briefly. Perhaps what will happen as more platforms crop up and the online music space becomes ever more fractured is that each individual artist will be forced to innovate, creating their own mini Viinyls and Sixty Ones. If so, my advice to artists is: ditch the manager and hire a programmer.
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