Myspace was nothing short of a revolution for the music industry, people stopped paying to have websites designed because Myspace suddenly offered all the tools they needed. The sites were customisable (in some cases to the detriment of the page!) and they could easily host music, photos and blogs from the band. More importantly it meant that you could generate a network of people who were into your music who you had an easy way to communicate with. This was a marketing coup for two reasons firstly it meant that you had an audience of fans who had chosen to be a part of publicity and therefore were genuinely interested to hear about new releases, tour dates, merchandising etc. No more yelling out to the masses hoping that someone who might like you would hear you!

It was also a way to build relationships with your fan base, regular blogs about day to day life made fans feel like they were part of the band, replying to mails and comments make the fans feel like they are part of a community that believe in the same music and support it by publicising it for you. The spoiler is that these days many artists’ Myspace sites are run by interns at the record label but still the illusion remains that you have a direct line to the star.

 The other coup was it gave you lists of people who might be interested in your music, online friends can see which bands other friends are friends with and knowing that their friends have similar musical tastes to them they then go and check out that band and probably sign up. Technology savvy artists began to use automated unofficial Myspace ‘bots’ that automatically went through other similar band’s friend lists sending out friend requests to all the users signed up to that band. Even though Myspace have gone to great lengths to stop this practice now it has in many ways invalidated a user’s friend count as an indication of how popular they actually are.

It remains to be seen if Facebook will replicate the completely indispensable quality that Myspace pages have attained within the music industry, especially in the US. There is definitely a school of thought that says it’s worth having a presence on as many online sites as you can. Other examples include Bebo.com and Imeem.com (which actually allows you to build play lists from all the music on the site and embed a player on other sites) and are well worth looking at but remember it’s a two way process. Social network marketing only works if you have the time and resources to put into it. Friends need to be made, messages need to be sent and replied to, blogs need to be updated and other people’s blogs need to be commented on, you have to be very proactive about getting yourself and your music out there. For some independent artists I’ve spoken to this amounts to anything up to several hours work a day but the payoff has been features on websites, press reviews, song placements in independent films, record contracts and of course sales of their records.

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