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With the demise of MySpace — and, let’s face it, the constant shittiness of that platform to begin with — the market has begun to fill up with alternatives designed to help bands pimp their wares. You probably already know Stereokiller for their music premieres, myriad reviews, forums, and social networking profiles, but the long-standing metal site has just introduced brand new custom band profiles.
There aren’t any reasons to be using MySpace in 2011. I suppose it can’t hurt to have a band profile there just in case someone happens to stumble upon it, but that’s about it; MySpace is a useless, out-dated, cluttered, piece-of-shit platform and there are better options now available. All bands and labels should now be using Bandcamp for their streaming music needs. Here’s why:
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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
Inspired this week by Vince’s response to Earache head honcho Digby Pearson’s assertion that the effects that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have been detrimental to metal, we decided to ask the rest of our writers:
HAVE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES ALTERED THE METAL SCENE FOR THE WORSE?
The MS staff’s answers after the jump.
In the latest entry on Ask Earache – the blog on which Earache head honcho Digby Pearson opens himself up to reader questions and promises “straight answers… without the bullshit” and defends re-thrash as a forward-pushing genre – Dig takes a stab at quantifying the effects that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have had on the metal scene. His argument is that the social networks have changed what it means to be a fan from going to the show and hanging around for all the bands to simply pressing the “like” button, and as a result the metal scene is suffering. As with the past Ask Earache blog posts I’ve read, Dig’s premise is sound but his logic leads to a false conclusion. Check it out as Professor Neilstein dissects his argument one point at a time.
Will MySpace Music users soon be asked to pay for the tunes they stream? Could be.
Metal Insider‘s Melinda Dolezal tell us that the floundering social network’s music division is considering a subscription model to help offset their plunging traffic numbers and their soon-to-expire ad deal with Google. This is stupid, stupid, stupid thinking!
If you’re in a band and you’re looking to get our music out to as many would-be fans as possible, new data suggests that you should spend less time vamping up your MySpace page and more time uploading your tracks to YouTube. From Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman:
Media measurement company BigChampagne has released some data showing just how much the two have changed in the past year. In 2008, a typical track streaming on MySpace Music for one day was equal to a week’s spins on YouTube. While it’s not metal, BigChampagne tracked the #4 song across both sites recently, Rihanna’s “Rude Boy,” and found that two years makes quite a difference.
MySpace Music (week ending 5/2): Rank: 4 (732,014 streams)
YouTube (week ending 5/2): Rank: 4 (4,282,376 video views)
Bram points out that while this speaks to MySpace’s decline, it’s got a lot more to do with YouTube’s rapid ascent; he backs up that claim with some nifty stats showing just how much YouTube has grown.
Of course, tons of people still visit MySpace to listen to music, but it seems like more and more people are searching for specific artists or songs on YouTube. So if you’re in a band — even if your band is signed — there’s no reason you shouldn’t post your songs on both MySpace and YouTube; include a link to your MySpace page and a link to your online store (if you’ve got one) in the video description so fans can find out more about you if they want to. May as well, right? You’ve got nothing to lose.
-VN
Enough is enough. If I have to scroll down 3 fucking screen-lengths in order to hear any music, it’s too much. If the MySpace page takes half a minute to load because the images are all 500k and hosted on photobucket, it’s too much. If a video player auto-loads you deserve a punch in the face. If your heavily-photoshopped band photo and use of eye-bleeding colors makes me go blind I’m assuming you’re covering up for the fact that your music sucks. All I need something simple to visually represent the band and the player itself… ya know, where the music is. Enough with the atrocious MySpace designs already. This goes for well-established signed bands too.
I’m really digging BandCamp.com lately as a vehicle for bands to have all-in-one pages. It’s so much simpler, faster, more functional, and best of all… leaves no room for bands to over-design their page and over-hype their own wares. Labels and bands, check that out. No one uses the social networking elements of MySpace anymore anyways.
Sincerely,
VN
In case ya’ll don’t know, we’re down with all the cool kids. Join us on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter if you haven’t already. OK, maybe not MySpace.
The killer metal news site SMNnews.com has just re-launched with a brand new design and interface; we highly recommend you use SMN as your metal news source rather than that other site.
Also be sure to check out the intrepid industry reporting the lads at MetalInsider.net are doing — smart, timely and sadonic, just the way we like it.
That is all. You may now return to your regular daily business.
It be true. So go and add us as a friend, won’t you? BIG ups to MetalSucks intern Natalie C., who took a break from changing our bong water and did an amazing job with our newly revamped MySpace. So check that shit out too, son. Yeeeahh boy!
On Friday we asked you guys if you still use MySpace, and the answer overwhelmingly suggested that you use it mostly for music listening and rarely for social networking anymore [That having been said, this poll was done on a music blog - Ed.]. Well, someone forgot to give this poor kid the memo. Iann Robinson of Nonelouder posted the following home video clip on Friday of a young kid in absolute hysterics freaking the fuck out when his older siblings try to take away MySpace from him. This is hilarious and extremely upsetting at the same. If it’s real — which we think it is.
-VN
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/RiqsbPlopUo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
MySpace seems to have hit some tough times. Since the site hit its popularity peak some time in late 2005, it seems like people are abandoning the social networking elements in favor of Facebook (and others), and are only using MySpace for its music-listening capabilities. In other words, the coolness factor seems to have worn off. What do you think?
