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.

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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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When things are new, and people are making a name for themselves by making bold assertions that sound futuristic, doom-laden or revolutionary, sometimes they fall into the trap of talking nonsense.

“CDs are dead!” is one example of this phenomenon.

Think about it. Does it really look like the CD is dead? Or even particularly struggling? Sales of mass-produced, commercially released popular music CDs are declining (though hardly dwindling to zero as some self-professed prophets of the digital age are trying to make us think), but the CD itself is alive and well. Thriving, actually.

I’ll explain.

When we talk about the CD, we’re usually talking about CDs for sale in high street shops. When I say ‘we’, I mean ‘the mainstream media’, and when I say ‘the mainstream media’, I generally mean ‘articles that have largely been cut and paste from press releases issued by the major record labels’.

But a step back reveals a much richer and more diverse picture - in which the CD is not only alive and well, but is making a concerted attempt at taking over my house, and probably yours too.

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