The Future of MySpace for Indie Musicians

Alex Iskold wrote a fantastic article yesterday about MySpace called, MySpace: Hot or Not. It's a must read for all Indie musicians and bands with a MySpace page. Essentially, Alex points to different trends about MySpace and seems to suggest that MySpace as a trend is potentially on the decline... Are music fans starting to get bored and annoyed with all of the "modeling" career clutter of MySpace, and the horrendous color schemes, illegible text, and poor design that some MySpace users deploy to promote their music.  Maybe...

Alex seems to suggest that MySpace users are no longer primarily focused on music, the original intent of MySpace. Rather, users are focused on self expression, keeping up with old friends and looking for dates/sex. If that's the case, then is MySpace still an important marketing and promotional tool for Indie musicians?

Yes, at least for now, as MySpace still has over 100 million users. Meaning, you have a MySpace page because it's the largest social network which allows you to reach many of those in your existing fan base, as well as tap into a potentially vast amount of new fans. But, MySpace is not the be all end all, as we are starting to see a rise in music only social networking sites which may one day become the preferred choice for music enthusiasts (more on this topic soon). Additionally, with all the noise from the immense amount of individual MySpace pages, you have to be creative in promoting and marketing your music, a topic I will discuss in the near future. We will also take a look at Facebook, a supplemental social app. for marketing and promoting your music.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Peace.

Comments

[Kat]

Thanks for the info. I tend to think that the future will be in smaller more niche social networks. Right now, though, I definitely think that, barring a major overhaul, Myspace is on it's way out.

[netvalar]

My opinion is that social networking sites will become similar to working your fan base in the real world. Some bands I have talked with will have fans in cities near by do the main work of getting them gigs. How this relates to social networking is that in order to get out there as far as possible many of these same thinking bands will get thier fans to promote them on other networks then the ones they operate themsleves. I am in the process of writing several articles along this lines for social networking.