Tuesday, August 11, 2009

To have a MySpace page- or not?


Question: You have said before about the importance of myspace when promoting a band however. What do you think of a band like tragedy who dont have a myspace and refuse to have one because of their politcal ideas. Aparently the reason for not having one is because of myspace's connection with the murdoch media empire and by signing up to it you are endorsing what the company stands for. Surely its possible to exist as a band without a myspace or website considering its how the scene existed before ite creation.
From:

Answer: I can understand Tragedy's viewpoint and they are correct to say that MySpace is owned by Murdoch's News Corporation, and so don't want any connection with such a big business for political reasons. I admire their hardline stance, however I also think its a little bit short sighted because any band which wilfully does'nt maintain a web presence in this day and age is foolish.Online is hands down the simplest and best way for a band to interact with its fans.

So tell me, how do members of Tragedy communicate? By telephone? By SMS? The Telco companies that run those networks are even bigger than News Corp.

Bands don't know what an amazing thing Myspace has been for them in the last 5 years.It has literally transformed the music industry.The services it offers, streaming 10 songs, access to, and the means to interact with, over 100 Million+ other music fans, all for FREE.This is really insane. If any band wanted to maintain a regular website themselves to do all this stuff, working 24 hrs a day, all year, with hardly any downtime, it would cost them thousands of dollars per month to run it.

I would say that if MySpace were to start charging bands for their services, because it is undoubtedly showing its age now with facebook and Twitter being the growing online social networking sites, and I'm sure it must be tempting to consider imposing a small monthly charge for the MS services. I for one would pay it, because its become so entrenched in our daily promotion and marketing work at Earache. We probably maintain about 30 pages on the site for various compilations and marketing purposes, and occasionally for bands who don't want the hassle.
here's a few of them:
Grind Madness
Deicide's Back Cat
Heavy Metal killers
Metal Box set
Thrashing Like A Maniac

No comments: