My behavior when visiting a musician’s website has changed considerably over the last year. Today, when I visit a site I immediately scan the homepage for a MySpace link. Almost all musicians have a link on their homepage now. (An example here, here, and here.)
Keep in mind this is not a commercial for MySpace. I’m not being paid by MySpace to write this (unless they want to pay me). There are things I definitely do not like about MySpace. But right now - especially for musicians - MySpace has the upper hand when it comes to truly serving the needs of the performing songwriter or musician.
This article is not really for musicians - though you will benefit from the insights. Instead it addresses a growing problem with sites that quite simply do not get to the point.
There are five reasons that MySpace is better than a regular band website:
- It’s all on one page. If you go to a musician’s website, you have to click through to find pictures. You have to click through to find a forum. You have to click through to find news, tour info, video clips, etc.
Instead of poking around a website to get a grasp on what the artist is all about, most people just look for the “Check us out on MySpace” and go there for a quick overview of the artist, who their “Top 8″ are, and the latest news and tour info.
Why poke around like a rat looking for cheese if you don’t have to?
- People know what to expect. To be honest, MySpace is the McDonalds or Starbucks of the web world. Going to a MySpace account means you know what is there. What you can’t find on a musician’s personal website without poling around for an hour, you can almost always find on MySpace.
It’s not the prettiest interface. But it works (most of the time).
It is consistent. It does the job.
Most fans do not really care if they are greeted by a fancy Flash intro. Most fans do not care if the new personal site has the same color scheme as the new album. All they want is information dammit! When is the next gig in my area? Who are they touring with? When is the new album coming out?
Until web developers “get this” and can convey that message to musicians, the developer’s livelihood in the musician niche is threatened.
- Circle of friends. At a glance, you can gain insight into a musician’s influences and friends with the “Friends list”. Oftentimes this is a better source for inside information than people might think. Sometimes you’ll find a “significant other” in the top 8. Sometimes you’ll find artists of a completely different genre of music in their friend’s list that somehow has a connection to your musician.
Getting a sense of the artist’s place in the “scene” is a great way to create a marketing perception in the mind of the listener. Unfortunately, on most regular band websites, the “Links/Friends” page is buried at the bottom of the navigation. That needs to change! Start name-dropping right on the front page!
- Two way communication. Real interaction. Go to your average musician website and it takes at least one click (usually two or three) to find some sort of contact information. Even if you just want to send some congratulations to the artist on a new album, award, or recent show - you can’t. All that is available is “booking@artistname.com” or “webmaster@artistname.com”.
Sure, sometimes there is a forum. But then the listener needs to register - which means keeping track of yet ANOTHER name and password. So monitoring the progress of a half-dozen of your favorite bands becomes tiresome, and a juggling act of usernames and passwords.
Yet with MySpace, a musician (or tour manager) can post updates with relative ease and listeners can monitor and communicate with bands - all with one login/password combination. Beautiful!
- Time to launch. If you are a musician that is not tech-savvy, and have no friends in the web biz, have fun working with your web developer on your site. About the time you are done hassling with design, content, pictures, forum, news page or blog, and it is launched, guess what! It is time to redo it again! Even if you are not ready to “redo”, simple modifications to the existing site can often take days, weeks, and sometimes MONTHS.
But with MySpace, all the tools are there. Tools for communication, tools for media (pictures, video, and audio). The musician can list influences, add pics straight from the road,add live songs, news, blog, and so forth.
Quite simply, it removes a link in the chain. No longer is the web developer holding up progress.
Web developers need to really think about how they can simplify the time to launch websites, and how to offer simple tools for an artist to communicate with fans and dispense information in a timely and efficient manner. Several bands I follow now have a simple splash page which says “Coming Soon - Meanwhile check our MySpace account for updated tour information and news via our blog.”
The problem? They have had a “Coming Soon” page for almost a year! The reason is simple. Why duplicate what they already have at MySpace?
Right now MySpace has the upper hand on band websites. Will it continue? I believe tools for regular band websites will be plentiful soon, and they will be customizable enough to look unique and reflect the personality for each artist.
Until then, don’t ignore the advantage of MySpace and it’s incredible popularity and reach.
5 Comments until now.
It’s funny you should mention this because we have a similar problem trying to keep sites updated. We are definitely interested in MySpace type tools for the band’s actual websites. Anyone have any ideas?
Yeah, it’s called blog software. Get some.
I was just looking at this site over at MySpace and they said they are going to be moving alot of their stuff over to MySpace because it is a lot easier to update MySpace on the road. Check their blog at their MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/stephaniesid
Great article, I found this on Shoutcast. I’m a web developer and you couldn’t be more on the money.
I’ve argued something along these lines, but a bit more compact: MySpace works because it’s like a concert, because it’s like something that’s going on as opposed to something that happened or will happen.