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.