5 Reasons For Bands & Musicians To Quit MySpace
Let’s face it, unless you have a full time person to make your MySpace totally bitchin, it’s time to look into another platform to use as your main contact point with your fans. I understand MySpace has always been a necessary evil, but when it comes to actually getting a decent return on investment from your time spent, MySpace will never make the cut.
You cannot track where your fans are coming from
While you can boast a high pageview count, high friend count, and high play count on your songs, you’ll never really know who is doing what on your profile.
You don’t know who the talkers are
The most important part of getting good word of mouth is identifying the talkers. Who is bringing people to your shows? What regions is your music being downloaded the most from based on those “talkers”?
What blogs and twitter users have pimped your page?
Other bands are not your primary source of attendance
According to the statistics I’ve heard, there are roughly 8 million bands on MySpace, and you have 15,000 of them as friends! Unfortunately, those people are probably not buying your albums or attending your shows. While they may be good to do a show swap with, or bro down with for a tour some day–they’re not helping you pay the bills and put butts in your seats.
The 10% of users that are real people more than likely COMPLETELY ignore the “bulletins” that you can blast out to everyone. When was the last time you went to a show based on a bulletin you saw on MySpace?
Controlling your brand is impossible
You’re a band, but the day you decide you want to try to make a living off of your passion you are a brand–a product. Even if you have created a badass theme for your profile, you still can’t control the look of any of the other subsequent pages associated with MySpace. (Add me as a friend, send a message, blog etc.)
This doesn’t even consider the sheer bombardment of advertising you have on the top and bottom of your profile page. Best part is, if you figure out how to hide the advertisements, you’re in violation of MySpace’s terms of use and risk getting your profile deleted.
You can do everything MySpace does outside of the MySpace universe
Just to prove my point, you can do everything that MySpace does for you, I’ll post a few of the other places that offer the same services. (For free of course)
Embed your music
Imeem offers the ability to upload and create a playlist that you can then embed on your site, for free. Best part is that other people can embed your songs as well. Last.fm also offers this service
Fucking blog
My number one tip to anyone who does anything these days online is to WRITE. MySpace’s blog platform sucks ass, and offers no clean way for users get your content without being at a MySpace page. WordPress is easy to find/create templates for and is a far more dynamic platform to control/track your band’s internet presence. Commenting, subscribing to your RSS feed, and integrating with newsletter platforms is almost entirely drag+drop on WordPress.
Bulletins
Twitter.
Local Concerts iPhone Application. (opens in iTunes)
Tour Dates
With Last.fm you can post your tour dates which will then show up on their website as well as on their concerts iPhone application which I never leave home without. Last.fm also integrates with Livekick which sends users notifications of when your band is playing in the users’ area.
Last.fm also recently released one of my personal favorite iPhone applications Local Concerts. (Opens iTunes) Which will send you text messages when a concert has been posted by you. You’ll never miss another show again.
Sell Music and Merchandise
Last.fm allows you to sell your music that you upload which can also be embedded–oh and you can track it too. WP-E-commerce and Storenvy are two tried and tested ways to sell your merchandise and/or music in your own customizable store.
WordPress may require a bit more of advanced skills, but Storenvy allows you to host an online store on their servers where they handle everything from site setup to checkout. I highly recommend them. (Not to mention they’re the best printers we’ve ever worked with. We should know, we still print our clothing line with them.)
Disagree with me?
Feel free to post it in the comments as well as any other resource sites I may have missed.
Like this post? Bookmark it!
Email to a friend
Your message has been sent!
Please enter a valid email.
Your email failed. Try again later.
Related Posts
Most Popular3
About the Author
Tim is the co-owner of Assault, and tends to think he can party twice as hard as anyone. Follow him on twitter @assault Email this Author | All posts by tim
While I can definitely see some of your points, I cant completely agree with the article. Your right Myspace should not be the end all be all of your band promotions online, but there really is no reason why should abandon it completely.
Myspace provides a very convenient place for a band to post music, pictures, blogs posts and shows.
Your right, you can do everything you do on myspace outside of myspace, bottom line is if you really want to promote your band should be doing EVERYTHING you can to spread the word about your band on the interwebs.
Part true
But, MySpace gave me contacts with venues I didn’t know before, and they didn’t know about me also.
PS : what’s the MySpace icon on the right side of your page here ?
A couple people have said it above, but completely quitting myspace and taking your page down is probably not the best idea. It’s still the go-to place for a lot of people to find and stream band’s music. It should by no means be a band’s main source of music online or their hub for all fan interaction though.
We have a myspace page yes–we do not do any marketing through it nor do we use it as a source of marketing.
I agree with many of the points about Myspace and it’s limits. It is a good presence but should not be the only source news, blog posts, etc. Very good article tho. I got some good ideas from it. Keep up the good work.
[...] >> 5 Reasons for Bands & Musicians to Quit MySpace [...]
[...] business owner) is to install and configure Analytics on your website. Do yourself a favor and get off of MySpace. At the very least MySpace should just be used as another avenue to reach fans, not your only or [...]