Recently, after speaking to the Head of Music for Myspace, I wrote another blog post explaining that Myspace is not just ugly, frustrating and riddled with spam – but actually compromises the ethics of its users while exploiting your music and your audiences… and why it can and will never be what it should be.
Myspace is not simply irrelevant, it’s utterly poisonous.
When I wrote that first blog post, I suggested that Sunday October 24th 2010 should be declared ‘Quit Myspace Day’. Nothing has happened in the intervening year to change my mind about that. In fact, if anything, I’m more convinced than ever that we’re all better off without it.
So now it’s time to just close our accounts and enjoy a Myspace-free life. Tell everyone you know. If you’re on Twitter, it’d be great to see the tag #quitmyspace trending.
You deserve much better. Happy Quit Myspace Day, everyone.
I get this question pretty much every time I go and speak somewhere. It’s generally about MySpace, but it also relates to anything like the automated friend adders, chat bots, scripts and automatic human being replacements in social networks.
Essentially this is about making decisions about the kind of conversations you want to be involved in.
I’m sure you can already guess that my answer to the title question is a resounding “No” – but this is not about making you do all the hard work so that you have to reap the benefit. Believe me – this is not my serious work ethic talking here.
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.
Its aim is to provide useful resources, advice and strategies for innovation and success in the independent music sector in a rapidly changing technological environment.
NMS examines emerging technologies (and buzzwords) such as AI, blockchain, metaverse and 'Web 3.0', but focuses primarily on sustainability, music as a tool for social change, participation, equality and inclusion, and the ways in which music technologies can build better worlds.
