Is MySpace a great way to get your band out there?

I can say that if you're in a band, myspace is pretty valuable. It serves as a kind of second mailing list where you can announce shows, and it helps you hook up with other bands that you might like to do shows with.

For now. I think a lot of us were burned by the mp3.com experience.

I need to hear these little idiots! What is their band's name?!

Seriously, do the bandana bandits have a band or what?

but, they've got "the look" down!!!
SMU PWND!1

oh coffee....

that is not those gals.

Classic

that is NOT the SMU i'm thinkin of, at all.

Since it started, I think. Do some research.

x-post: It's true - from the economical standpoint it doesn't make any sense for 10 different magazines, more often than not residing under the same corporate umbrella, to pay 10 different writers to call Fiona Apple a "smoky-voiced siren." sooner or later, when people stop kidding themselves that music reviews reflect unique and subjectove opinions, there will be a music-review equivalent of Getty Images where everyone will be able to stop by for a quick "objective" blurb.

i've seen some horrible results. making all text unreadable.
too much stuff on page makes it load like syrup.

they've really cracked down on the nudity thing, too!
color me suprised...

didn't notice this before but on MySpace's Music portal they list top genres presumably as in which genres are most listed by artists on there. the top 10:

Hip Hop 2,539,664
Rap 2,404,495
Rock 1,802,763
R&B 1,583,259
Other 1,078,764
Alternative 862,300
Acoustic 742,087
Experimental 614,484
Pop 723,426
Metal 611,365

interesting but it's probably distorted by all the indie acts describing themselves as "zouk/showtunes/christian rap" or whatever

fair point. Indie is 11th incidentally.

What sort of twat would describe themselves as other?

http://version2.andrewkendall.com/images/photographs/livemusic/theothers_161004/main/theothers_161004_10.jpg

lolz

I wish magazines/blogs would stop linking to bands' Myspace profiles when the band in question has a proper website elsewhere with the same info but without the vomitworthy layout.

which bands have these proper websites? you can name them here.

I wish magazines/blogs would stop linking to bands' Myspace profiles when the band in question has a proper website elsewhere with the same info but without the vomitworthy layout.

agreed.
but to be honest, the up to date stuff is more than often on the godawful myspace hang outs.
in fact a lot of bands redirect their bands URL to the myspace corner.

I don't know why.

I have a webspace url, and it's dead easy to update. The only reason it's out of date is that nothing has happened.

In comparison, the Myspace is a git.

In comparison, the Myspace is a git.

absofuckin'lutely.
this is exactly what baffles me about the continuation of the use of myspace by bands (or their record label people)
its truly horrid to use/look at/listen to music via etc ..

They link to the myspaces because they know people are/were choosing to go to myspaces rather than bands official sites, for that increased sense of community, direct engagement etc.

smarter thing may be to link to bands official site which would probably re-direct to the myspace anyway

myspace sucks, but its popularity as a vessel for artist websites isn't exactly baffling. thousands of bands and rappers that would never have their shit together enough to have their own domain name have myspace pages, because they're free and easy to make. from the standpoint of someone who covers a lot of local/underground music, especially hip hop, i can't totally hate it because in 2005/2006 there was an almost overnight shift where suddenly it was a hundred times easier to find even the smallest artist online and be able to contact them.

its truly horrid to use/look at/listen to music via etc

lol you old ;-)

lol i know and care not.

uh...he's right, though. age has nothing to do with that.

It does in the sense that teenage kids often have different aesthetic sensibilities to us middle-aged folk.

i.e. the kids I know who use a lot of Myspace totally don't think it's ugly

and often take a lot of time and effort to make their pages even more garish and eye-bleeding

I blame these guys:
http://www.paperrad.org

most kids are really crap at drawing too

more young people than old people have ugly awkward myspace pages, that doesn't mean liking or settling for awful website design is an attribute of the young

i mean if you're 47-year-old aunt is on myspace odds are her page looks horrible too

you're=your

looks horrible to you and me and some other people not to everybody

it's a notoriously, fundamentally badly designed website, irrespective of the bad colours and huge images.

hey, i think McDonald's burgers are delicious, but when a company becomes huge mainly due to business savvy and the convenience of the service they provide, it's a little simplistic to go "people love it, obviously none of their customers have any complaints with the quality of their product"

That wasn't my point tho. My point was that not all of the users think it's horrible.

From my point of view (i.e. research for articles), MySpace has the benefit of standardisation. You roughly know where all the information is going to be, so you don't have to faff around with loads of different navigation paths on standalone websites (half of which are too heavy on the design and weak on function). Also, you can generally rely on the MySpace info being bang up to date, as opposed to some abandoned Marie Celeste of a website. Plus you can start streaming the music straight away without fiddling around with downloads. Set against all that, I can live with the aesthetic ugliness...

not all of the users thinkcare that it's horrible, morelike

the standardisation and accessibility are huge pros but the clunkyness of the whole thing outweighs this for me. i dunno if the guy they got from Vimeo to redo the UI is still working on that...

typical example page: http://uk.myspace.com/florenceandthemachinemusic

the huge gap between the top of the page and the actual content seems common now. v bad. i hate the inconsistent box widths, lack of padding...a few other technical gripes. too many pics and embedded vids on one very long page really.

Sorta like how trying to keep up with lots of visual artists via RSS is very frustrating when they think they need a flash-portfolio custom website with no feed or a summary feed without images (u kidding?). Get a blogspot and get busy.

interesting but it's probably distorted by all the indie acts describing themselves as "zouk/showtunes/christian rap" or whatever

― joe, Wednesday, June 24, 2009 12:53 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^also i seriously think there's more of those bands than ones that call themselves "indie"

regional/comedy/mexican is another favorite

yeah m@tt you were on point back in the day w/ this thread: Ghettotech/Comedy/Regional Mexican

“It’s easy to go shoot an art movie in a winery in the South of France. But people have no idea how hard it is to create something like Transformers. They review me before they’ve even seen the movie.”

love this guy

wrong thread lol