Yesterday, my Hypebot collegue Kyle Bylin celebrated the first anniversary of Andrew Dubber's Quit MySpace Day, even offering instructions for quitting. Blogger Steve Lawson agreed: ..."it's become almost exclusively the domain of spammers and blanket marketeers—musicians shouting at other musicians about gigs by bad bands on the wrong side of the world."
Dubber even updated his call: “MySpace is not simply irrelevant, it's utterly poisonous." They're all right. MySpace is a mess on many levels, but I still believe that every artist needs to maintain an account there. Here's why:
6 Reasons Not To Quit MySpace:
1. Eyeballs
Nearly 60 million unique visitors viewed 500 million pages on MySpace last month. Those numbers may be smaller than a year ago, but they are are still significant. And I don't buy the argument that most of them are other musicians.
2. Search Rank
Search for most bands and MySpace will usually appear as one of the top 5 results. Can you afford to have fans click on that link and find a dead or out of date MySpace page?
3. MySpace Is Still Mostly About Music
There are some good music add-ons for Facebook, but MySpace is still about music at its core. A place about music attracts fans and bands should want to be where fans are.
4. It's Easy
MySpace may not be pretty, but it is easy. Services like Hoote Sutie to Sonicbid's ArtistData make it simple to keep multiple social networks up to date simultaneously.
5. If Other's Aren't There...
Be a contrarian. If some artists are quiting MySpace or leaving pages unattended, that decreases the competition for those 60 million pairs of eyes.
6. The Makeover
MySpace is in the middle of a major makeover. I'm as skeptical as you are that it won't help. (Check out their absurd new logo). But is it smart to delete your account before we find out?
Dubber even updated his call: “MySpace is not simply irrelevant, it's utterly poisonous." They're all right. MySpace is a mess on many levels, but I still believe that every artist needs to maintain an account there. Here's why:
6 Reasons Not To Quit MySpace:
1. Eyeballs
Nearly 60 million unique visitors viewed 500 million pages on MySpace last month. Those numbers may be smaller than a year ago, but they are are still significant. And I don't buy the argument that most of them are other musicians.
2. Search Rank
Search for most bands and MySpace will usually appear as one of the top 5 results. Can you afford to have fans click on that link and find a dead or out of date MySpace page?
3. MySpace Is Still Mostly About Music
There are some good music add-ons for Facebook, but MySpace is still about music at its core. A place about music attracts fans and bands should want to be where fans are.
4. It's Easy
MySpace may not be pretty, but it is easy. Services like Hoote Sutie to Sonicbid's ArtistData make it simple to keep multiple social networks up to date simultaneously.
5. If Other's Aren't There...
Be a contrarian. If some artists are quiting MySpace or leaving pages unattended, that decreases the competition for those 60 million pairs of eyes.
6. The Makeover
MySpace is in the middle of a major makeover. I'm as skeptical as you are that it won't help. (Check out their absurd new logo). But is it smart to delete your account before we find out?
