Boards
Good and bad music myspace design
As someone who visits many myspace music pages when compiling a local gig list, I have been often dismayed by the lack of usability of said pages.
Here are some requests/tips for the design of such pages:
Name of the page
DO: Have a page accessible by searching that EXACTLY matches how you spell the band name, including capitalisation, punctuation and deliberate misspelling
DON'T: Put gobblegook before or after the band name making searching for the page a tortuous task
Music
DO: Have some music
DON'T: Have a million songs - choose your best or most recently-recorded
Selling music (CDs or mp3s)
DO: Try to have something people can purchase (or download for free). A photo of the sleeve, a bit of info, and a button to click (e.g. paypal) placed unobstrusively are good.
DON'T: Sell! Sell! Sell! Constant shouty demands for people to part with their money aren't welcome. If someone likes the music they will look for the place to buy something. No-one likes the shouty sell approach.
Photographs
DO: Have a photo or two of the band or inidvidual members - however, photos are optional.
DON'T: Fill the page up with loads of gurning idiots, or, worse, posing idiots. There is a photo section for that sort of thing.
Biog
DO: Biogs are optional, but, if you have one, then choose entertainment, information or poetry, or a combination of these
DON'T: Have some godawful musicbiz blurb
Links to band website
DO: Have a link if a website exists
DON'T: Pretend to have a website and insert a link that just reloads the myspace page or, worse, directs the user to a generic web page listing of life insurance companies
Reviews and quotes from the media
DO: Include good, well-written, lucid assessments of the band
DON'T: Include a positive quote from Jo Wiley - she loves every new band
Gigs
DO: LIST YOUR BLOODY GIGS, and correct any errors/update any changes
DON'T: Not list the gigs or leave errors and updates uncorrected
Influences
DO: Mention people you admire and who have had a noticebale effect on your songwriting and performance
DON'T: List the most famous bands of the last fifty years, because a) it says nothing since the Beatles have had an influence on most bands, and b)it could be construed as being a list of bands designed to catch all people who are doing myspace searches based on influences.
Design of page
DO: Have a page that is readable, that looks neat, that loads properly, that doesn't take eons to load, where the information is accessible rather than requiring hard work to find.
DON'T: Have stupid colours of font that can't be read because they are too close in tone to the background
DON'T: Have a background that is so clutterred that the text above it is impossible to read
DON'T: Have a large photo or image at the top of the page - extra scrolling puts people off
DON'T: Have music that starts automatically regardless of the users' settings - give people the choice of whether or not to hear the music immediately
DON'T: Fill up the page with bad videos - one good live performance is sufficient