Myspace, it seems everyone has one, including your favorite bands/musicians. A great marketing concept. Get your band on MySpace, get a ton of friends and maybe a major label will sign you. It’s a dream, but it could happen. While this is defiantly the exception and not the rule, MySpace has change the way local/unsigned bands use the internet.
Before MySpace, for band to have a website they either had to know a web designer, hire one, or do it themselves. All three options can end up disastrous. Since everyone thinks they can be a web designer, there were a lot of poor websites out there for bands. Hiring a web designer either got you a similarly poor website or the person the band hired was too expensive to keep on the payroll and so the website went out of date and just kind of sat there, lingering in the cloud of the internet forever ignored. The third option, doing it themselves, usually yielded as good of results as the “hire a friend” route. Resulting in a not so great looking website that was quickly left outdated and ignored.
So what does a band usually need in a website. First and foremost, they need a way for people to hear their music. Secondly they need to be able to keep their fan base updated with news, recent events, and concert dates. Also, and this is probably paramount in a band getting big or not, is they need a way for the fans to interact with band and vice versa. Taking feedback, holding contests, and connecting their fans to each other. These are pretty much the essentials. Some bonus options would be a place to upload photos and videos from recent concerts. MySpace offers every band in the world these basic needs and their doing it for little to zero monetary cost. However, the terms of service for musicians has changed recently and MySpace can use and sell a musician’s music without having to pay them, so that could be viewed as a very high cost.
But the basic point is still the same. A new band can set up a MySpace page and quickly begin communicating with their fans as well as other bands. And they can do it with almost zero up front cash.� This is a new/unsigned band’s dream, because keeping their costs low means more money in their pocket and/or more money towards the cost of merchandise which is going to make the band more money in the long run.
What is this going to do to the business of web pages for bands� Well while some bands have made their MySpace page their “official” website, I do not think it is going to hurt the web design business with regards to band websites.� While new/unsigned bands can benefit heavily from the free MySpace page, larger bands can benefit from their own website with their own tools and methods for communicating with their fanbase by utilizing the separation of data (example: different pages for photos, tour dates, message boards, etc) and easy navigation.
[Technorati Tag: Music]
[Technorati Tag: MySpace]
Michael Koby 
How MySpace is Changing Music
Myspace, it seems everyone has one, including your favorite bands/musicians. A great marketing concept. Get your band on MySpace, get a ton of friends and maybe a major label will sign you. It’s a dream, but it could happen. While this is defiantly the exception and not the rule, MySpace has change the way local/unsigned bands use the internet.
Before MySpace, for band to have a website they either had to know a web designer, hire one, or do it themselves. All three options can end up disastrous. Since everyone thinks they can be a web designer, there were a lot of poor websites out there for bands. Hiring a web designer either got you a similarly poor website or the person the band hired was too expensive to keep on the payroll and so the website went out of date and just kind of sat there, lingering in the cloud of the internet forever ignored. The third option, doing it themselves, usually yielded as good of results as the “hire a friend” route. Resulting in a not so great looking website that was quickly left outdated and ignored.
So what does a band usually need in a website. First and foremost, they need a way for people to hear their music. Secondly they need to be able to keep their fan base updated with news, recent events, and concert dates. Also, and this is probably paramount in a band getting big or not, is they need a way for the fans to interact with band and vice versa. Taking feedback, holding contests, and connecting their fans to each other. These are pretty much the essentials. Some bonus options would be a place to upload photos and videos from recent concerts. MySpace offers every band in the world these basic needs and their doing it for little to zero monetary cost. However, the terms of service for musicians has changed recently and MySpace can use and sell a musician’s music without having to pay them, so that could be viewed as a very high cost.
But the basic point is still the same. A new band can set up a MySpace page and quickly begin communicating with their fans as well as other bands. And they can do it with almost zero up front cash.� This is a new/unsigned band’s dream, because keeping their costs low means more money in their pocket and/or more money towards the cost of merchandise which is going to make the band more money in the long run.
What is this going to do to the business of web pages for bands� Well while some bands have made their MySpace page their “official” website, I do not think it is going to hurt the web design business with regards to band websites.� While new/unsigned bands can benefit heavily from the free MySpace page, larger bands can benefit from their own website with their own tools and methods for communicating with their fanbase by utilizing the separation of data (example: different pages for photos, tour dates, message boards, etc) and easy navigation.
[Technorati Tag: Music]
[Technorati Tag: MySpace]
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