MySpace the Best Choice for Bands - Technology Evangelist

This may seem pretty obvious, but it really hit home with me tonight: most bands should use MySpace as their primary online communications platform.

Why? Because it's simply too hard to create what MySpace already has in place.

That, and the fact that most musicians don't seem to have experts on building web communities as friends. They're more likely to have designers as friends who can build beautiful web sites that the band has no idea how to update. That's kind of a big deal when your fans are looking for information on upcoming concerts, new CD releases, etc.

MySpace really is the ultimate band site, with easy to blogs, bulletins, community building, an RSS feed, photos, videos, and song samples. Recreating that from scratch would take a lot of work, and it wouldn't provide easy access to the fans who are already on MySpace.

Of course, there is one big advantage to building something independent of MySpace: Access to Facebook and other audiences beyond MySpace's walls. And MySpace tends to be very stingy with the content you contribute to their site, so don't expect to be able to easily retrieve your own content should you choose to more to Facebook or your own site in the future.

Ah, crap. I may have just talked myself out of using MySpace as a band platform.

I think what bands need is a resource for helping them find band-specific web developers who can build the right type of site for them so they won't get trapped into something like MySpace or an underpowered site built by a friend.

Any thoughts?

When I first started my blog, I went with Blogger. I discovered that it was slow, flaky, underpowered and didn't offer the fine control that a control-freak programmer like myself craved.

So I moved to paid hosting of a phpwebsite blog, and I've never looked back. Any content management type system is good, but I'm really leery of the big boys, especially when they are changing hands right and left, and I jealously guard my content.

A band site with not a lot of articles and stuff may be different, but with the proliferation of bundled and third party modules for phpwebsite (four developed myself), this platform is the way to go.

If used properly, MySpace can be a valuable tool for any artist. Although I'm no fan of MySpace because it can so easily be abused.

I wrote an article on writers using MySpace and how it can be a good way to promote their work and themselves (ie. promoting book signings, lectures, etc.).

Check Reverbnation out. You can use Reverbnation to keep ALL your pages (myspace, facebook) up to date at once using their widgets. Not as many "eyes" on it as myspace but fans are easy enough to sign up - right from your myspace/facebook whatever page. Great fan / mailing list management features.

Myspace definitely has the popularity factor but revernation is no nonsense and was built for musicians and simply blows myspace away with usability and featuers.

Comments

1. Posted by: Gabe on August 22, 2007 10:51 AM:

As I'm sure you know, there are a more than a few competitors to mySpace out there.

My favorite is by far VIRB.
The features are all comparable to or better than MySpace, and the design is (what a concept) actually usable.

The one thing Virb doesn't have that MySpace does? 61 Million registered users.

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