The Tuesday DiScussion: MySpace or MyFarce?

the girl with the titties?

...myfarce

(sorry)

I don't think much has changed over time...

People don't care about MUSIC let alone new music. It's stuff to have in the background or maybe go dancing to. Thats not a bad thing or a critisism. It's just how things are. Hence the reason really big bands are normally quite beige and mediocre, as they are palatable to a wide market of people.

But I think its always been the same.

Small band start off with no fans, geeks hear them start raving about it, 'taste makers' hear of it and start pimping round to record companies and PR companies. Hopefully a celebrity will say they like the band. Things escalate from there.

But in all seriousness not much has changed. The 'myspace revelations' bands are just a new type of PR, to make people think they're discovering something before anyone else. Because people love that. More a search for whats the newest and unheard of rather than whats actually good.

Am i only one who thinks that Lily Allen song is horseshit....?

Also the fact that most people don't want to sift through a deluge of demos to find quality is not a bad thing. They want to be told what to like. They don't have the time or the inclination as they have other concerns.

Otherwise there would be a hundred times more people trying to do your job......just a thought.

I did wonder, too.

a pretty cynical opinion of myspace/"the internet generation" in general.
"And because 'users' know their 'friends' on these sites don't actually care and probably wouldn't be into it anyway"
err, no. i've been told of many bands, perhaps through a myspace bulletin. But what's the difference in a bulletin and a messageboard post at the end of the day? if its on DiS then you know the main majority of users that will read it/answer it, just like most will (or should) know the majority of people on their myspace friendslists.
I think some of those q's should be looked at more cloesly, as they just seem in an unconnected list like that, espec the idea of "average small bands" being here today and gone tomorrow, see The Datsuns and other outcasts from the "New Rock Revolution (tm NME)", and i reckon soon to be including Editors etc.
The ideas are good in this, but its structures.....loose?

but the statement:
"Nobody Uses Social Networking to Promote Bands"
is wrong. just because your myspaz friends don't post about new recommended bands it doesn't mean that everyone else of the 60million users don't.
i still fail to see the difference in that though, because i see 10s of posts of dis per day with myspace links and there just as effective whilst getting people onto the site.

it gets people onto myspace but it doesnt come from myspace itself. it's not part of the social network. if you get me. all the features in the broadsheets all make out like it's its own organism but it really doesn't work like that, in my opinion.

i'm glad if people do say "check out this band..." half the point of this is to inspire people who know their shit to do so. but then if everyone does it we're right back in overwhelming square 1 again with 80million people shouting 80million different things.

http://www.myspace.com/metricband - hehe

just try and build up their friend count as high as possible anyway. You see bands with thousands of friends but when you actually look at the profiles you realise barely anyone actually listens to their stuff.

It's become an incredibly cynical thing but I certainly don't think Myspace itself is to blame. In a sense it's just a tool and some people use it in ways I don't like (for example I hate it when people advertise their gigs in my comments section - it's just plain bad manners) but that doesn't change the fact it has become a useful way of quickly checking a band once you hear about them.

It's probably prejudiced of me but I do assume that a band/label that doesn't have its own website isn't especially committed to what they're doing.

did you know you can make it so bands can't request you?

that's just not true about lily allen. she was already MASSIVE on myspace before she was in the observer music monthly in may.

i love her. i think she's really talented.

But the problem I have is that most of my Myspace friends are in bands themselves as I use it myself as a way for my music to be heard and to keep in touch with bands I know when we like each other's stuff. Plus occasionally bands I don't know personally who've heard my stuff get in touch to offer gigs etc.

So although I'd like to block the people who've never met me and are using me to plug themselves, I don't want to block all bands.

What'd be nice (although impossible) is if some kind of code of behaviour for bands was put in place, even unofficially, to stop the spamming.

how do you do that??!

this i suggest people check out the bbc radio1 message borad the punk one its quite funny, they are talking about how good the bellend from big brothers band are, another point proved,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio1/F2675881?thread=3196490

thar we go look and laugh at the twats!

...that these bands are still raising their profile and it helps in the long run.

There's lots of bands I hear on the radio or read about online that I've not yet had a chance to check out live but I've listened to their songs, mentioned it to a few people and raised awareness a bit for the future.

Obviously you're right in that the intenret doens't break the bands and with both the Artic Monkeys and Sandi Thom it was the mainstream media that ultimately took over and got them to the 'masses'. But surely the online attention (in AMs' case at least) contributed toward getting them noticed by the record label and the press in the first place.

I certainly don't think Myspace is pointless (and as a musician I've personally got a lot of out of it in terms of meeting other bands and getting gigs) but it is certainly naive to imagine that the internet can completely break a band.

the bands gain from it too.
it's one of those issues of capitalism that you can't always avoid.
someone bands don;t even use their main page anymore, instead focusing on their myspace - see les incomp.
surely they are aware of the lack of royalities etc but realise that the accesability of it, whilst paying ZERO covering feees can make it worthwhile?

I only heard of her because she was giving away free mix CD's of all kinds of music (Dizzy into Rod Stewart into Beats International) and I am such a pykey that I said 'yeah, I'll have a free CD'. Little did I know that she had put her own songs in the mix as well but without shouting about it, it was really subtle and I give her respect for that. I didn't know she was that twats daughter until she was in The Observer magazine. I just thought she was some slightly posh girl who liked music....

Not sure about this one? Much as I enjoy DiS the’zine and roster, why rally against myspace which is essentially just another media for communication? Reading the gist of what Sean wrote it seems to boil down to ‘we were here first’ and ‘nobody champions music using this’. Well there’ll always be somebody before you and somebody after you so no real kudos for simply being earlier. On the second count, re championing music, that is exactly and all that I am doing and myspace merely helps network that out.

Okay I may not be as “famous� as the late great John Peel, Steve Lamacq or even Jack Rabid but that isn’t the point. My reviews (hosted outside of myspace) have helped people find bands like DiS’s own Jeniferever and for me, getting feedback even from just one person makes it all worthwhile.

Myspace is whatever WE make it. To condemn it wholesale is akin to blaming the pen, telegraph, telephone or even internet for all the worlds ills IMO.

good discussion point though!

'new' music. As all music you hear for the first time is 'new' to you.

I believe the word you are looking for is 'hype'.

If you ask me it's all about credibility. Wasn't this site itself essentially set up so Sean and others could say 'Check out this band' when they felt like it? Nothing wrong with that, and people actually pay attention because a reputation's been built up.

If my friends tell me to check something out, I might do if I have time -- especially if it's one who understands my taste in music. If they email it directly to me, I'm more likely. If they personally burn me a CD and write the song titles on a sleeve for me, I definitely will, because they've put the effort into showing they're serious about it.

The Myspace thing doesn't offer this - it makes everything so easy that it negates its value. Yeah, it's a handy opportunity to check out bands but you'll only do so if someone or something else has raised your interest beforehand. Otherwise odds are you'll end up listening to one of the 10million shit bands rather than one of the 500 good ones on this planet (approx).

People can rave on about the internet revolution all they like - at the end of the day most people that buy records are still consumers rather than connoiseurs and they'll still ultimately be led to that Sandi Thom CD by an advert or plug on the telly.

But I suppose ultimately I'm an embittered 26-year-old who didn't spend his formative years socialising on the internet, and this is the territory of the emerging next generation that I'm never going to completely understand. Maybe Myspace and all that stuff is today's equivalent of mixtapes and fanzines, I don't suppose I'll ever spend enough time on it to really find out.

your right what you say
As someone in a band it was quite exiting to start a page and get people interested, but 6 months in it leave's you relalising its just a easy way to get people to listen to your music.

it worked for us, some people came to local gigs in london regulary.

these are people that would never of come to see us without myspace.

but its total bollocks that Record companies sign artists of the back of it.

lilly allen was signed before hand
sandy thom had a pr company pulling the strings and a publishing deal so wasnt that hard up to be unable to fix her car?

these stories are just made up to give bands hype, its the way the indusrty works

no one want to hear that hard fi lead sing was working in a shoe shop and got lucky

they start the band history from a later date

they would do it to most new acts

Lilly allen song socks cock as well

(shameless plug)

www.myspace.com/kikcsmusic

sorry couldnt resist it......

annoys the FUCK out of me, so does her fucking dad.

As for Myspace - it IS a shameless self promotion site that encourages everyone to wear their ego on their sleeve... and is therefore shameless. That said, it is definitely a positive space for unsigned acts and people making music in their bedrooms. It makes it accessible for anyone and everyone to listen to acts who can't get gigs/press or just aren't at that stage where they're ready to face the garish faces of the music media... Yeah there's a lot of shit on there but there's also a lot of good, interesting new stuff - in the UK and from across the seas.

Plus the whole sharing your love of new talent via myspace messaging...I'm all for it. Sean, surely you've got the various rather cringeworth excitable gushes about various 'AMAZING' acts i put on bulletins or blogs?

I've had to cut down of late though - as it sadly looks like ones' trying too hard...maybe thats why people don't tend to do it. Shame though. Its all about word of mouth innit.

tila tequila for myspace, emmaline for youtube, chantelle for uk idiots, these cults spring up all the time. not reaaly anything to do with music tho is it? and maybe the artic monkeys/sandi thom stories are just myspace myths but its been ace for my band. the majority of our decent gigs arre sorted out thru people we "met" on myspazz, loads more peeps ahve found us and heard us and its saved us shitloads on stamps...
and the "amazing band" bulletin does exist. i fill a cd each month of good stuff folks have told us about, and people have done it to us and we`ve had loads more adds.
maybe this is because of our tastes (ive never met a pavement fan who was rude or stoopid)or us not blindly mad adding people.
but that just seems common courtesy.and top of the pops can shut up too, it died because noone cares about the charts anymore. and yr metaphor about festivals holds tru, but how many DiS readers care about headliners at festivals? we`d prefer, and i hope i speak for the majority, new exciting shit. y`know, like metric and jeniferever.
i apologise for this its turned into a badly structured rant but it seems everyones always raining on myspace for whatever reasons and for a local band like ours or me looking for new good songs, its been nothing but helpful. tis just another form of communication. how can that be a bad thing?

Is how it seems to me. If the labels pretend that all this online MySpace, etc. scouting has been going on for ages as an 'underground' thing, people are more likely to buy into it as a genuine means of advertising themselves and bands.
Personally, I think it's effect is largely exaggerated. I've never found a good 'unknown' band on MySpace (not that I've looked much, admittedly).

I'm not convinced that the message boards, etc. work as a tool to spread the word either. At least not yet.
For all I tell everyone who'll listen just how brilliant The Cribs are, for example, very few people will actually check them out, unless it's delivered directly to them. They certainly don't want to have to look for it themselves.

smash hits magazine who closed down because too many kids were not reading mags anymore.. lala pop is dead loong live pop!

that's a sign.. the things you love to hate and hate to love going going gone because of some souless husk on the information super highway.. be careful what you wish for cos it's coming true.. what these social networking sites are doing is giving you back a sense of community, and shared experience. even on a level of "i'm on myspace".. the word of mouth that spreads like wildfire via these sites has proven to be the latest marketing tool for a generation of record company (and I include DIS in this) promotional people who have no other tools in their armoury that are no more effective than sending a band on the road and collecting some email addresses. make of that what you will, but the promotional abuese of myspace call into question the ethics with which it was started. i do think that bullshit indie ethics to one side - there's nothing wrong with telling someone something, nor is there anything wrong with trying to sell something or earn a living. The jumper wearing cunts who snipe at bands for selling out when all they want to do is pay the fucking rent,and earn what they deserve, can lick my hairy balls. ok my argument is descending into a rant. but my point being - it's the interstitial pop up ads that are annoying and bad.. but how bad is it to honestly post something.. then how bad is it to hire someone to secretly post things on message boards? not that I know of any artists doing that.. then is that wrong if it's shitband from bolton trying to get on, or is it bad when a major label does it, and is the indie label in between just about allowed to do it..

anyway.. work out what you stand for and against.. you're probably talking as much shit as me.

I totally understand all your angst here but I think it's simple market economics ie there is an over-supply music - a HUGE over-supply

and it is no doubt related to the 'get famous' idea - patricularly the industry and media propagated myth of the Rock and Roll lifestyle, fame, success, money, living the dream etc.

Having said all that I suspect your looking at it from something of a UK-centric or even a Londoncentric perspective. The UK has had a long (40 years+) history of an established pop music industry and subsequently an alternative music history has grown out of that and has at various times established itself in the consciousness of the British public in many diverse subcultures and phenoma with a supporting media etc.

Not all countries can say the same thing

Until recently, in many different territories your choices were the TV or the radio if you didn't live in a town or city with a healthy live music scene - and in many countries the TV and radio are without something like the BBC so are entirely commercial and end up being for all intent and purpose 'owned' by major labels and corporate interests

Myspace - for all it's sins - does afford the opportunity for anyone, anywhere on the planet to be able to check out any band, anywhere on the planet

More importantly it affords any band on the planet the opportunity to communicate DIRECTLY with their audience - this shouldn't be underestimated

Like any technology, myspace is in itself a benign entity - only its users (and/or owners) will see to it as to whether it is used for positive or negative purposes

Personally I find it somewhat depressing that music - an artform - has become, to the vast majority of consumers and industry alike, a cheap commodity. However, I really believe that this situation is a symptom of mass-consumer, mass-media western society and NOT the fault of Myspace or Murdoch.

as I think. There's a host of factors behind why bands become popular. Myspace, forums, webzines, email lists are all tool of the promotional trade. (Sometimes to me promotion feels like a dirty word!)

From my own experience, the record label I help to run, well, I just couldn't see it existing without the internet. We only release 500 copies of each record. It doesn't seem like a tall order, but it can be. We've kinda got to the point now where we do sell-out most of our releases. I don't know how we've managed to get to that point, but it must be the internet, 'cos we hardly get any other media. Even my own band have sold out our single and we hardly even played ourside of Sheffield! Myspace has been helpful for the label. We've had shops from europe & asia contacting us for stock and our bands have had gig offers. I don't know if we've ever sold a record 'cos of an individual music fan finding our profile on myspace, but I think we must have reached the few like minded people who do.

www.myspace.com/theespc

screen comments before they go online.
you still get to see the horrible spam though.

I only have bands/friends on there I like and trust. I am happy for them to tell me about what they're doing and moreover to promote that for them to those who see my profile.

Comments are there for OTHER PEOPLE to read. If it's only for you to read you send a message. You can hide/disable your comments if you don't like that.

Take the music/bands aspect away and I wouldn't go near it, personally.

would have been dis radio. lots of fun.

now its Contrast.
http://www.timyoung.net/contrast/

and not only because i contribute, i genuinely think its a great idea.

I think myspace is an amazing open door for thousands of bands who'd otherwise not have an internet presence at all or have their music easily accessible to lots of people. Which is on one hand a wonderful thing and on the other means that there are a lot of bands making a lot of noise and sending a lot of spam out.

I haven't personally, but know a couple of people who have bought records as a result of hearing bands on myspace, but that's mainly because lots of small bands don't bother with paying for hosting and domain registration or designing a website when myspace provides a one sheet of a page which can have gigs, songs etc on it. Simply put a paint picture up as a background, take some pics in a park on a digital camera and hey presto, band website!

Myspace is a lot more successful as a music community then a 'social network for friends'. In recent months people have started to set their profile to private or their age to 14 because they have got so bored of the random adds and spam. Speaks volumes when people sign up for a site to make friends, then end up turning off the ability for people to contact them doesn't it?

In fact a mate on mine first found a two girl bedroom band via myspace who'd never dreamt of playing a show before. He convinced them to play a show for him, he then booked them for his own nights in London, paid for them to record and in a couple of months went from a joke in a bedroom to a regular on the London club scene and were played on Lamacq the other night. Not exactly fighting Nick Cave for biscuits backstage at Pukkelpop yet and probably won't, but none the less they've living a dream so to speak.

through myspace. rarely the ones that try to add me as friends [though there've certainly been one or two], but often through exploring the friends lists of bands i already like. i do frequently look online for music i haven't heard, and my time gets divided pretty equally between mp3blogs and myspace. i've gone to gigs and bought records by bands on the basis of what i heard on their myspace pages. not bands that went on to become one of the ten big acts of the year; just bands whose music is more than worth the time it took me to stumble across them, and who i'm glad i found. that's enough for me.

it's easy to shit on myspace, decry it as a murdoch-owned evil, but to deny its obvious usefulness is blinkered and rather silly, i think. it's undoubtedly flawed, not the least of its faults being its policy regarding artists and copyright, and i don't blame artists who are pissed off by this.

it is nonetheless the most instant way to hear a band's music and develop an interest in them without just downloading their mp3s [which i hear some people don't like]; i look for a band's myspace page before i look for their website.

what's needed, if one objects to myspace, is an alternative, which crucially provides as universal a platform for promotion, communication and listening facilities as myspace does, without all the things you dislike about it. and if it isn't as universal as myspace, it simply isn't going to work as well.

Well, there's nothing too much wrong with the music part of Myspace. If you want to know what a band sounds like, chances are they've got a page on it and you can hear up to four of their tracks, and sometimes download them too. That can't really be a bad thing.

Where I agree with Sean completely is where some shadowy figure starts a story that it all happened through Myspace, it's usually bollocks. And Arctic Monkeys' primary method of distribution wasn't Myspace, it was the demos put up on sites like YouSendIt etc.

My guess is... for big bands the impact of a Myspace page is pretty minimal - loads of comments every day from fans just look like a difficult to read message board and the tracks are usually well known anyway. But I can make music, put it up there and anyone can hear it. It takes a cynical person to say that that's not a little exciting. The idea that Myspace is the route to riches for every aspiring musician is just bollocks though - if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. And Sean's rightly pointing out instances where that was claimed to be the case and it just wasn't.

I had to strike the balance though, much as I agree with Sean and despise the shadowy men in ponytails, it's useful for the non-million sellers. I run Clearlake's website, and in spite of my efforts on that I'd say that as many, if not more, fans have been pulled in through Myspace.

The way you push those together I want a tit wank and come on your face.

Isn't that what the Publicity Dept wanted?

Never mind the talent have a wank over these boys and buy the record.

I'll settle for the wank :)

'Trawl-free' new music site. Tons of great new artists here - if you want to support new music and are bored of myspace, this is a good place to start:

http://www.pulserated.com

would have guessed that this article would have stirred up so much chatter?

i dont really get the focus of the rant here, in a way that you say that myspace is useless, yet arent blogs like this just as bad? arent WE sitting here some of the " people checking out new bands have to be more than a 1,000 or so of the geekiest geeks with too much time on their scabby-dry hands? "????? ...hate to admit it but..

HOWWEEEVVVERRRR
"Did you know that NME's biggest hype success since The Strokes, who seemingly came from nowhere (but already had the same press officer and radio plugger as Ash/Kaiser Chiefs in place and on the pay roll long before they got signed), Arctic Monkeys were plugged repeatedly on the DiS boards back in May 2004 as "Sheffield's answer to Jet"?" --- can i just ask what you mean? is it that the strokes and artic monkeys are sellouts becaues of nme not myspace? lol sori but just wondered...
or infact do u like them.
jsut wondered on that too.
ok. il shut up now.
but reply. yea.

Please check:

http://www.myspace.com/lostknivesband

I do think it's a cool band I can recommend... if it wasn't for myspace I would never reach those kind of projects...