Over the last year I have had the opportunity to go to Recording Academy events on a regular basis. One of the most reoccurring topic is the continuing relevance of Myspace as an outlet to musicians. Most musicians who are savvy with social media shy away from acknowledging Myspace altogether. Even though its popularity with users is down, many well-known users such as Lady Gaga and Green Day keep their Myspace pages updated and current.
The weaknesses of Myspace for musicians are many. There is little security preventing users to download mp3s and video. Those who use facebook and twitter frequently may connect their feeds to post onto Myspace and vice versa. This cuts off the ability for users who see this to use one platform to communicate to the artist using another. If the musician posts from Facebook and connects it to Myspace, users who comment on Myspace may not be heard from, as their comments are not fed back into Facebook. Since Myspace is not as popular as Twitter and Facebook, fans move to these other sites. Twitter has created a more direct contact to artists like Billie Joe Armstrong, Fat Mike, Gavin Rossdale and others with it's popularity with fans.
Myspace can be a creative outlet for musicians with interactive artwork and those who feel free to post music on the site. The ability to completely customize a Myspace page that is enjoyable can be compared to the cut and dry pages on Facebook. Myspace has an all-around inclusive site for videos, music, and commentary. A large amount of fans could help show that you have a strong enough following to be signed to a label.
Though there are strong cons to using Myspace as an outlet for music, it still is a tool available. Would it hurt to have one more site, one more page, one more listing in search engines that bumps your name up in your own search for popularity?
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