Indeed, I Did Delete My MySpace Page
Minor rant ahead. Last week I pulled the plug on my MySpace page, though admittedly not without a certain amount of hesitation and deliberation—it took a long time to amass those hard-earned 120k plays after all, that’s for sure. But, once I thought about the ridiculous valuations MySpace has bewilderingly managed to achieve on the back of advertising potential (not to mention the many millions of penniless and uncompensated musicians bolstering its value), as well as its corporate bedfellows, I felt a little better about ditching it.
It seems I’m not the only one who’s gotten fed up with numerous bugs and annoyances that litter the site, as various stats from the Guardian seems to portray a pretty sharp, but consistent, downturn of MySpace users and visitors over the past year. Personally, I got fed up with tracks inexplicably skipping part-way through, as well as the many error messages that used to plague the site, plus the tortuously inefficient attempt at page customisation, innumerable adverts and insufferable amounts of desperate spamming.
Of course, it’s still a free service though, so perhaps I shouldn’t grumble too much about its numerous shortcomings (though once its Google trust fund runs out next year, it’ll be interesting to see how it pays for itself). It does provide a familiar interface for those wishing to pop by and hear an artist’s music, without too much fuss. But unfortunately for MySpace, it’s no longer 2006, and there are much better alternatives for showcasing your music on the net. There’s Bandcamp and SoundCloud, for starters, both of which provide many more options and forward-thinking features, music widget-sharing facilities and greater general flexibility than MySpace ever could. They’re independently run, have no shareholders to appease, and appear to be run by genuine enthusiasts rather than advertisers and marketers. I don’t know how long that will last, or how both site’s growth will affect their continued operations, but for now things seem good.
But, as we’ve seen with countless other music showcase sites over the past decade, the online environment progresses swiftly, and if they don’t adapt and progress to meet the expectations of their users, these sites will quickly fall by the wayside. As soon as MySpace proves to be more of an unprofitable millstone around the necks of its parent companies, it’ll be discarded just like the rest before it. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about the online economy, huge page views and users don’t equate with profitability, and as soon as one free service bites the dust, another will pop up, until it too realises it can’t squeeze money from users expecting a free service, and so on.
I’m getting fed up with hopping from site to site, keeping up with the latest ‘social’ trends, so I figure it’s perhaps best for me, at the end of the day, to concentrate on my own site, rather than spread myself thinly across various social outposts. I’m not earning a living from this (not by a long shot), and have never drawn much of a crowd regardless of how much I plaster myself over the net, so I don’t feel the need to advertise my ‘brand’ the way as a more… radio-friendly act might.
I do find it ironic given the continued fanfare we read weekly about the net’s ‘empowering’ or ‘democratising’ effects on indie musicians, only for us to end up having to connect through the mediation of a huge site like MySpace or Facebook in order to stand a chance of being heard, even if that chance pales against, say, winning the lottery. As for networking and communication—what’s wrong with email? At least we can control our communications that way, rather than relying on infrastructure set up for us by MySpace and Facebook, according to their own whims and advertising needs. Twitter has shown us that our networking online selves can essentially be boiled down to efficient sound bites, necessarily so in order to keep on top of the endless communications torrent (insofar as we ever can), and for that it does do a very good job. It goes to show though, just how far we can quite happily pare down our online selves to the bare minimum required, when needed.
Anyway, I’ll stop there. Hopefully, somewhere within that ranting, there’s some insight as to why I pulled the plug. Thanks for hanging in there.
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19 Responses to “Indeed, I Did Delete My MySpace Page”:
As you know, I never got the point of MySpace to begin with (why so many glitter graphics?), though, of course, I’m not a musician trying to make a buck. But again, if every musician trying to make a buck, no matter how minimal their talent, is on MySpace, then it dilutes the impact for those few who do have genuine talent as well as drive. Might as well find something that works better for you.
I like this. I too feel the futile endeavors spouted by Andrew Dubber et al to be pale attempts of smiling in the face of overwhelming odds, like holding a rusty bucket up to catch a tiny bit of the tidal wave (sorry, tsunami (*gesundheit*)).
Anyway, good on you for not plastering. The web has enough wallpapering. I actually prefer people doing their own little sites. Seems to have a bit more individuality to it.
I will say this though – the one reason why facebook etc are so popular asides from the connectivity thing is the spam-less messaging.
A lot of people don’t even email anymore.
Nuff said.
M
That’s certainly an attraction as far as I’m concerned—the creative and individual autonomy afforded by our own websites. Where MySpace and convenience are concerned, I also see laziness: why would you wish to homogenise your music by putting it up on MySpace? It’ll just detract from your own efforts crafting your own site (not to mention poaching a chunk of your own SEO efforts in search results). Rarely do folks actually click through to your own site from MySpace, in my experience—they’ll just judge you from the content MySpace allows you to put up there, then wander on the the next profile. (Perhaps this sounds a little rich coming from a guy on another WordPress-based site, but I think it’s tailored just enough to my own needs without damaging usability.)
Oh, I do think Andrew Dubber etc., offer some sage advice, but realistically there’s a limit as to how your can realise results from their advice; there’s little use in chasing the same carrot as everyone else, especially at this level. You’ve simply got to carve out your own niche on a common-sense foundation, making it easy for listeners to get to hear your music and want to throw some change your way somehow.
You really made me think about removing my own myspace page too but I guess as long as I don’t care much of it it does not hurt anyone that its there
Some valid points. And actually pulling the plug is fairly commendable given the hype that surrounds many of the most popular social networking sites. They drag you in, making you feel like you’re otherwise missing out, but on what exactly? A load of artist/producers befriending you who for the main you don’t really like, nor would you be particularly interested in chatting to or listening to their tracks for more than ten seconds. A negative generalisation this may be, but one that is making me realise (increasingly as i type) how true this is to MySpace.
The sad (or happy) truth of the matter is that i discovered Ochre for the first time today after checking out the Bloc MySpace, which is how i ended up here. Good old MySpace. At least i’m now listening to and enjoying your music via a means that doesn’t involve an advert for Little Boots.
Yeah—I’m beginning to think that this is the model for social networking sites:
1. Capitalise on fears of exclusion and alienation by offering tenuous promises of social importance and interactivity.
2. Expound the virtues of online ‘democratisation’, supposedly allowing content creators to reach fans directly, yet simultaneously positioning yourself as a transparent middleman, gaining power by leveraging the Long Tail values of negligible individual content creators multiplied by large number of users. Net effect = aggregators win, individuals lose.
3. Force users to interact individually solely through the infrastructure you provide, thereby strengthening your control as users become familiar with, and dependent upon, your infrastructure to further their illusion of social interaction.
4. Achieve stratospheric pie-in-the-sky valuation based on the number of users dependent on your service, though with little to no thought as to useful monetisation strategies other than ads.
5. Go bankrupt, while the users abandon ship for the next social networking flavour of the week.
I’m only half-kidding with this, but then perhaps I’m almost one tin-hat short of a conspiracy theory…
Perhaps, but I think the truest part of your statement is probably “aggregators win, individuals lose” – this is certainly the case with iTunes (60% profit from Your track?), Getty images ($1 per photo – way to undercut professional photographers), and increasingly pump audio.
It’s a bit like folding@home (but this time in a negative way) – why bother with in-house solutions when you have the vast collective power of the internet competing?
From a corporate perspective, it’s no different to keeping labour in third world countries –
but until there’s some sort of worldwide unionisation of musicians (*cough*yeah right*cough*) can’t see it changing a lot.
m@
I think you’re right in a lot of what you’ve said – in particular, the countless millions on sites like myspace make a mockery of the idea that musicians actually reaching anyone, or that the cream will rise from the pack simply through democratic force. A few years ago, maybe – but no-one is going to get ‘discovered’ on myspace these days. It’s exactly as Mike R said – all the non-band members of the site have realised that all that’s left is ‘a load of artist/producers befriending you who for the main you don’t really like, nor would you be particularly interested in chatting to or listening to their tracks for more than ten seconds,’ and are jumping ship…and with them, more and more, are going the musicians.
The only thing that I think myspace still has value for is that its where people go to check out a new artist. It’s almost an reflexive response; you hear about someone new, you look up their tracks on myspace. As you said Chris, gradually that function will be replaced by better sites like Bandcamp. But for the moment myspace still has that source of internet traffic largely dominated.
I think the natural successor to the music social network site is the blog – people who want to hear about cutting-edge stuff are better served going through the musical filter of a blogger than wading through the mind-bogglingly vaste ‘democracy’ of myspace. how much blogs reflect trends rather than create them is an ongoing debate…but the potential is there. Put 100 bands through a writer with a good ear for music, he’ll pick out the best 10 for you, then decide yourself which ones you like. It’s a lovely Utopian idea isnt it!
Looking forward to the new album mate.
Hey Chris, you did a good thing. I’m sure you remember when I committed MySpace seppuku last year. You did the right thing. MySpace is a vampire and you have a real website so there’s no point in causing your users to have to going through that system just to hear you. I am very close to doing this again.
Cheers mate!
Thanks Michael—I do remember that! But you’re back on now?
Yeah but I am not sure for how long. It hasn’t really done a whole lot of good for me.
The other thing I have considered is using it strictly as a re-direct link to my own website.
I appreciate all the above reasons, but I love hearing new music and will grasp it any way I can. In the same way users will abandon ship for the next big thing in social networking, I will abandon MySpace once I’ve found the things I like…so thanks MySpace…:)
Absolutely, Kate—it’s still handy for sampling artists’ music, but as an artist I felt the negatives outweighed the positives, obviously. There was a time when I optimistically uploaded my music to wherever possible, with a ‘build it and they will come’ mentality, but these days I’m a bit more realistic in gauging my music’s reach/appeal. Let’s see… in addition to MySpace and Facebook, I also had profiles at Virb, Reverbnation, Bebo, PureVolume etc.
If fans wish to create groups on their preferred social networks that don’t already exist, then they’re free to do so, but it doesn’t make sense for me to maintain a MySpace page to deliver less than 100 plays per day, yet still suck traffic away from my own paid site.
Just a note to say your work is great, and I have shared your opinions regard social networking for some time. Live is the best way to push.
I still think pubspace is best, although facebook is handy for arranging meeting in pubspace.
Agreed; pubspace definitely takes some beating, though I haven't logged on to pubspace for quite a while.
Hi!
What do you think of the idea of using myspace as a re-link to your own website?
Don't know to what extent this is possible the myspace folks will surely not like that much…
Often myspace (or else) serves as an 'entry point' for people not knowing your music (i started searching at myspace myself instead of going to your website directly). In this way they see the people you are connected with or they follow a link from another musician on myspace to your website – you never know…
I think its hard to judge for people who know your music already…
Maybe you could embed your website into all these music communities, if possible? Its at least better than maintaining 20 profiles at a time.
btw: new album is great, artwork too!
thx
Glad you're enjoying the new album, thanks!
Well, if you'd like to set up a MySpace fan page for me, please feel free to do so (I'd really appreciate it), but I don't really feel an inclination to set another one up myself.