I get this question a lot. Because you hear this a lot. And musicians want to know, because most of them rely on MySpace as an integral part of their online strategy.

Well, as much as it pains me to say this, I have to come back with the answer: No, I’m sorry - it still matters.

Because I’m not a fan of MySpace. Hate it with a fiery passion, in fact. And yet, when I compiled a recent top 10 list of music-related sites that artists NEED to be on, this came out as number one. It’s not relevant because it’s good - it’s important because it’s so widespread.

So while this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, here are three good reasons that MySpace is not just still alive and well, but actually pretty damn near crucial for online music business.

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One of the biggest problems of integrating internet strategies into your already busy music industry life is the problem of becoming overwhelmed with information. Now that you’re using the internet, there are all these sites to maintain, update, and provide content for… and a whole lot of others to read.

There are online references, mailing lists, MySpace pages, blogs, social networks, photography sites, music communities and recommendation engines to contend with.

How do you even start to cope with all that, hang onto the other important stuff you were already doing, and yet not have some sort of nervous breakdown in the process?

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Scott Cohen presents…

I was unexpectedly at Futuresonic in Manchester on Thursday, and I’m pretty glad it worked out that way. I can’t recommend strongly enough that if you get the chance to go to this sort of thing, that you make the most of it. Attending seminars and conferences is how you’ll get that one little bit of knowledge or insight that’ll give you the edge you need. It also means you can strike up a conversation with whoever’s presenting and pick their brains.

You’re probably aware that I attend a lot of these sort of things as a speaker. I try and get to as many as I possibly can as an attendee as well. It can be invaluable stuff and I always learn a lot.

In this instance, there were some really great people there, and some interesting talks — particularly the session on social music.

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So I didn’t quite get to Chicago yesterday. You may recall that I “won” a trip to attend a blogging conference. Well, I missed my flight. And since I was in Manchester for an extra day, I went along to Futuresonic, which seemed a pretty good use of my time.

The conference was interesting. If I wasn’t heading to the States, I’d have loved to have stayed and attended more sessions. Bigwigs from Last.fm, The Orchard, Dopplr and a bunch of other organisations were in attendance, as was my ‘nemesis’, Swiss media futurist Gerd Leonhard.

Gerd and I have had debates online in the past. At first, my problem concerned the very nature of what he purports to do. It’s like he’s selling himself as a music business fortune teller. I’m automatically distrustful of people who start a sentence “In the future, we will all…” — because a) it’s entirely speculative and unprovable; b) it’s bumper-sticker thinking; and c) it’s always wrong and usually unhelpful.

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