An entrant in Ze Frank’s Ugly MySpace Competition
Another one I get asked an awful lot – particularly by musicians who are just getting started in the online environment. They’ve heard about MySpace, and that it’s where all the musicians are – but they’ve had a bit of a look through and are a bit bewildered.
Let me help: What should be on your MySpace page?
Frankly – as little as possible.
While it’s true that the purpose of having a MySpace page is to direct people to your own site, that doesn’t mean your profile should be so ugly that it has them running and screaming. Zen levels of simplicity and design are paramount.
Assuming that you’re a musician, or in a band, then as we’ve discussed, it’s pretty important to have a MySpace page, even though that might seem to defy common sense, taste and decency. So let’s talk about how to avoid the worst MySpace crimes and use it to its best advantage.
Here are five things that SHOULD be on your MySpace page:
1. Your photo
This should be a photo in which we can see your face. Humanise the interaction. You have a cool logo? Great. Put it on your website. That’s where you can concern yourself with professional design. On MySpace, you’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation and abandoning all other hope.
2. A short bio
Tell people who you are. Be really brief. Nobody is here to read your life history or an essay about why music is important to you. Just the facts about who you are right now, please.
3. A clear link to your band’s website
Make it obvious that this is a place where people can stumble across your music and listen to it. This is not where you do your business. Why? Because you’re a professional.
4. Some pictures and videos
These do not go on the main page. At most, there should be just one video on your MySpace page (though none is my clear preference), and it should not under any circumstances autoplay when you land on the page. But you’ll notice there are links to Pics and Videos under your photograph on the main page. These links should lead, as promised, to Pics and Videos.
5. Your music
Put your music on MySpace. It’s the one thing it’s good at. Let people hear your music. Let them add it to their own profiles. Let them download it. If at all possible, DO NOT make it autoplay when they arrive on your page. People tend to browse multiple pages simultaneously and have several tabs open at once. If more than one thing is making noise, things get closed without getting looked at. Let people see everything, get a sense from the picture and the bio – and then let them press the play button. They’re FAR more likely to listen that way.
Here are five things that should NOT be on your MySpace page:
1. A background image
Sometimes background images look cool. Mostly they don’t. The most important thing is that people can read your text and see what to click on. A background image against which text disappears or is difficult to read is a problem.
2. Spammy comments
If another band wants to put a flyer on your comments section, say NO. Be utterly ruthless about this. It’s not impolite. Your MySpace page is not a wall for posters and nor is it a place for people to say ‘Come and check out my page!’. Comments are for fans to say how much they loved your music – and when are you coming back to play in their town. Show some respect for your audience and don’t make them read crap and other people’s ads. This is your garden. Weed it.
3. Anything animated
Flying text, moving pixels and flashing bits and bobs make you look ridiculous and it detracts from the message rather than adds to it. If you have an animated music video that you’re featuring as the one YouTube embed on your profile, then that’s obviously fine – but otherwise, if it moves – kill it.
4. Your influences
These should be a good indication of other (probably more well-known) artists whose music is like what you do. This is not to show off how cool and obscure you are, and nor is it to place yourself within a pantheon of legends. This is purely for search. If people like band A, and you are like band A, then band A’s name should appear somewhere on your page so that when people google band A, they find you. Influences is the place to do this. Don’t go overboard – ten’s a good number – and be accurate.
5. Blog entries
Let me make this clear. This is NOT your blog. But blog entries on MySpace are useful as news updates for the casual visitor. Make sure you have compelling headings, because that’s all that shows up on your profile. People need to click through to get to the MySpace blog. You might as well show them something interesting – and make sure it leads back to a link to your own site.
But don’t waste your time obsessing over MySpace. Make it as clean, presentable and usable as it can possibly be under the circumstances, then go and spend your time working on your real online profile, where you can actually customise properly and have some control over your communication.
If you want to add me as a friend on MySpace, be my guest – but do bear in mind that I spend very little time in that environment. My dislike for it borders on the pathological.
What’s on YOUR MySpace page?
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26 Comments
Can anyone suggest a decent flash based audio player I can use in a WordPress blog/site to play my artists songs on their site?
We want to stream songs from the website as well as myspace and would like something clean and simple…
@ James
I’m currently using the yahoo media player on my site… it’s got a nice interface and is pretty easy to set up (line of code in your header, and an audio link in the posts) there are also other options but i am currently using that one :)
@ Andrew
another great article, in the past i think my myspace was guilty of all 5 of your donts and i now relize that i still have a couple to fix (but i too try to spend as little time there as possible)
“2. Spammy comments”
Normally I agree with about everything you say, but I disagree with this vehemently. I think one thing that is very important about being a successful artist, particularly an independent DIY type, is building a good solid network. It is a good idea to spam up fellow on-topic artist sites, and encourage them to do the same on yours. It is a great way to cross promote. I watch site statistics like crazy, and the click-throughs on these sorts of spammy comments are pretty high, and tend to generate valuable traffic.
I think the key point is discretion and taste. Giant, ugly banner images always get the axe. Tasteful, informative spammy comments should always be allowed to slip through. Also, it is a good idea to post plenty of comments that aren’t just spam as well. But outlawing them entirely is a bad idea, in my opinion.
1. your photo
I don’t really do data on this stuff but I can be pretty confident in my experience promoting bands on myspace recommending that you should definitely have a picture of people or peoples faces, on your page, most suitably the people who make the music, I’d suggest.
What I’m also suggesting at the moment is little artist video intro clips, maybe half a minute with a little proposition to check out the site or do the mailing list thing, or a particular song or video you want people to hear/see.
Other stuff I guess is obvious. Make sure it says where you are, what kind of music you make and who your music sounds like for search.
Take Tom out of your top friends list unless you really insist on being ironic about it, otherwise you DO look like a noob. Put bands you sound like in your top friends so casual visitors can quickly identify what kind of sound you’re about.
Thats some basics. Providing various social proofs needs a whole post.
@ Daniel
Yeah I give the local bands free reign.
BUT a myspace comment box is 320 pixels I believe, people.
Always respect the boundaries.
@Daniel Yeah, I can see that. I guess that means that we have different definitions about what constitutes ‘spam’, but we’re both careful to respect our readers and not let through anything that messes with our values as far as what’s appropriate in the community is concerned.
I would imagine there’s a position between ours as well – one where artists that you are actually connected with – geographically (as in Matt’s ‘local bands free reign’) or in terms of record label affiliation – might be allowable, but complete strangers would not get their posters approved regardless of the tasteful design.
It comes down to where you want to build the network. Personally, I don’t think that sticking advertising posters up on someone else’s profile constitutes community-building, and you’re more likely to annoy someone than make a mutually beneficial professional relationship.
But I can see how it would be acceptable to many artists under the right conditions. I’d take a hard line to try and counteract all of the nonsense that goes on – but your more measured approach seems like a convincing strategy too.
I wouldn’t agree that it’s a good idea to ‘spam up’ fellow on-topic artist sites. But I would agree that forming a mutually beneficial relationship would be advantageous. Like some sort of social networking, perhaps. :)
I like this site a lot. This particular article dances around a subject matter that I often say outright-MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT DESIGNERS! That’s my second biggest problem with MySpace (my first is its AWFUL infrastructure). I think that most of the points made by Drubber are valid if you do not understand design and are good guide lines. At the risk of self promotion, I’d like to submit sites I’ve done for my projects and for friend that break some of these rules, but in a way I think works via usage or organization.
My group’s page:
http://www.theoppositeoffaith.com
This is a holder page with an animated image while I work on the actual-I only show it to show it in comparison to the…
YouTube Page which uses the same image as a background element but not to the point of distraction.
http://www.youtube.com/user/oppositeoffaith
…and lastly, a friend of mine page on MySpace that I designed which, I think via organization, show good usage of web elements and resources (to be fair he’s a known artist in his circles):
http://www.myspace.com/hierodomino
Some may agree or disagree-let me state I present this info in this light (in other words-IMHO), but the point I hope to make is that MySpace sucks more because of people’s total lack of understanding of design and smart marketing (spam. blows. period.) than anything else. I’ll be glad to see it die (when it does) mostly due to that.
J
http://www.youtube.com/user/oppositeoffaith
Sorry about the typo Mr Dubber…!
“But you’ll notice there are links to Pics and Videos under your photograph on the main page. These links should lead, as promised, to Pics and Videos.”
Although I agree with you entirely from an aesthetic point of view, it’s worth noting that you need to be signed up/logged in to MySpace for the ‘pics’ link to work. If you’re not a member (i.e. me and… well, I’m sure there must be someone else out there) that bit can’t be accessed.
I don’t tend to worry too much about the exciting and informative world I’m surely missing, but it’s probably worth consideration from anyone using this sort of thing for a specific purpose.
Solid advice, man… I’m sending this article to all of the artists I’ve produced in the past few years!
It’s nice to read that I’m not alone in despising the spammy comments from other bands. Even on our label’s site I try to eliminate those obvious ones. Hopefully more Myspace artist pages will follow suit. I click away immediately if there’s sparkle text or bouncing ascii graphics. Ugh.
I’m with Daniel. I actually encourage my friends to spam with new song, CD release or gig notices. I don’t feel that it hurts me at all.
The crap about “Find out who’s looking at your MySpace page,” “Oooh, I can’t believe Macy’s sent me this gift card,” “Who’s your secret MySpace crush?” and other such tripe just gets flushed.
One thing you missed. If you’re going to hold my comment for approval, do NOT make me fill out the freakin’ “CAPTCHA” thing. If you’re going to look at it anyway, what does it matter if it’s me or a ‘bot that posted it. Grrrr! (pet peeve time)
Hey, Andrew, I agree with most of this, as well as your appraisal of a MySpace presence as an unfortunate necessity. However, it seems odd that you put “your influences” and “blog entries” under things that should NOT be on your MySpace page, and then spoke about the benefits of them.
Good article overall, thanks for sharing.
Clif
Wow – thanks, Clif. Just goes to show I’m not over that jetlag just yet. I’ll certainly amend that when it comes to the e-book version of these questions. Appreciate the eagle eye!
Hobbit – I’m totally with you on the ‘Captcha’ thing. I’ve been known to write comments and then not post them because of the friction introduced by making people (i.e. me) decipher a code.
Sorry, but I’m not that opposed to the Captcha/ Hexadecimal Encryption thing because there are many, many people who would write bots that would cover the earth in spam. It’s just a necessary evil.
One of my friends who helps run a successful label told me for a while he was actually taking time out of his day to sift through what was real and what was ‘hot chick wants to meet you’ or ‘check out my music’ before Captcha came along. As with all things, I think the person who puts up the page should have a choice-if you don’t mind or even want people to post up various ads on you page/myspace then cool, but I just think its lame when some one does it without asking for your permission.
On one of my favorite service (Fuzz.com) I am completely ruthless when someone spams me or post ‘check out my band!’ on my page and I’ve never even talked to them, it will come out in the wash-but not in my wash as far as I’m concerned…
NP, Andrew, glad to assist.
Hey, J, good to see you here. I agree about Fuzz – spam is just not tolerated for the most part, which is one of the reasons I love that site. It’s been great to be part of forming that social norm with a relatively new network, as opposed to MySpace, which is permanently set in its ways. And while hopefully folks will follow Andrew’s advice here, the fact that most people don’t keeps a lot of folks I know from even going to a MySpace URL.
So yes, MySpace is still somewhat necessary, but hopefully it won’t stay that way. Sorry, Tom ;)
Great advice. I’m not an artist myself. I run a non-profit streaming internet radio station and have a MySpace page in an attempt to lead people to it. My product is other people’s music, but I think your advice applies to me as well.
I use a WordPress plugin called Myspace Crossposter (http://moourl.com/egp36) that re-posts anything you post on your own WordPress blog to your Myspace blog. It’s a great way to get more exposure for your blog without doing any extra work. Your posts will even be announced in the Friend updates section for anyone who is “subscribed” to you.
I’m not sure of equivalent features for other blogging packages, but it’s worth looking around for something. if not, it’s pretty easy to switch to WordPress.
@James,
The odeo player I use on my site is excellent for posting single songs.
The cool thing about it is that it’s just flash with no script in the head at all so you can provide code snippets to your fans/readers that anyone can post just about anywhere – like I do on this page: http://www.bsidebeats.com/promote.htm
Love the article. Dear Mr Dubber, could you give me an example of a myspace page that is made the way you feel it should be? Cheers! Ard.
All good advice and I agree with most of it. However it seems to be based on the author’s personal preference. Any data indicating the best use of social networking sites for business/actual sales?
I would like to recommend a book about website design to those who want to take this seriously-It’s called ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ by Krug
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Make_Me_Think
It gets into details about how to design a FUNCTIONAL, USEFUL website (which completely doesn’t fit with MySpace! LOL!). It will also give you a good foundation as to what you should have on your site for whatever you are doing…
J
DANIEL -
I agree with you on this. I let other labels and bands promote on my myspace as long as they allow me to do the same. The hope is that someone clicking on their page will discover your music.
That’s THE only reason that I use MySpace… otherwise why even use it? You could direct traffic to your traditional site.
What you call “spam” I call networking.
Anything NOT music related is considered “spam” and I won’t even approve the comment!
how can i get myspace picture on youtube with a music…
As far as annoying myspaces, M.I.A. has a pretty obnoxious one that I came across, haha. So obnoxious that I was entertained by it. So it serves its purpose in a roundabout way…
http://www.myspace.com/mia
We use Myspace as our actual site believe it or not. Between that, Facebook, and Reverb Nation, it’s a rather customizable platform to promote from. We will get the normal website once we have the cash, but these sites work pretty well if you use them right.
Most people expect the autoplay to plague them, so it doesn’t affect them aatht much when it starts, but now Myspace has made it that the song won’t start until you actual scroll to the part of the page where the player is.
@Sam
http://www.myspace.com/mia
Oh my God, that one really is a winner :-)
Cheers