Family,
As we reflect on 2009, we just wanted to say a BIG thank you for helping us have such a fantastic year! Starting with our annual event – BP Music Gathering this past April, the BP Sumer Showcase and our Artist Development weekends in Chicago, Dayton and Greensboro. As we look ahead, we’re excited about not only the year ahead but also what God’s doing in the next decade and are humbled that we get to be a part of impacting the culture for Christ through music. As always, if we can be of service to you, don’t hesitate to let us know. Blessings to you in 2010!
Brandon & Antonio
BP Music Gathering April 16 -17 Nashville, TN
we’re looking forward to great things at the upcoming gathering. The Open Mic Showcase is back by popular demand and of course as always, we’re putting you face to face with some of the brightest minds in the music business. We’ll have industry execs – EMI Gospel’s VP/GM, Larry Blackwell and Artist Development Director, Karen Jackson; Gotee Records President, Joey Elwood; Billboard Magazine’s Wade Jessen and many more music professionals on hand. This is THE event, if your goal is to make progress in your career. Act Now!! Register today and you can save $50. Make an investment in your future! www.gobeyondpotential.com
Do something good for your business this holiday season by adding a new logo, cd or dvd cover design to enhance your company look and product awareness. Check out freelance designer Michael Phelon at www.michaelphelon.com Today!
If you are in need of guidance on what steps to take next with your music career contact Sideman Consulting. They are currently booking in-person Music Career Consultations during Stellar Award Weekend, January 14 -17, 2010. If you plan on being here in Nashville, TN take advantage of this great opportunity at www.sidemanconsulting.com.
Joi Morgan is the CEO/ Founder of RareJEM L.L.C. is a company that focuses on the local events, artists, and businesses internationally. The goal is to increase an awareness and audiences for our clients. RareJEM L.L.C. prides itself on helping those who may not have the a large budget to hire a larger firm. We provide quality customer services with integrity. Using social sites, mediums, and publications, the increase in audiences, sales, and production will be reached. We always provide booking management as well. Our mission statement: “We represent you because you must bmaj (be major)!!" To find out more information contact us at www.rarejem.ning.com.
Emerging Artist of the Week
Tisha Stratford is an emerging gospel artist with a powerful, rhythmic voice and musical style that fuses R&B, Dance/Techno, Pop and Classic Gospel. She is currently writing and recording her next project and its going to be dynamic! Go to http://www.imagospelsinger.com/profile/TishaStratford or www.tishastratford.com to hear more from her upcoming project!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
ANOTHER MUSIC TOOL YOU CAN USE!
HELLO EVERYONE,
AS YOU ALL KNOW, WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR WAYS TO HELP FURTHER YOUR MUSIC MINISTRY AND CAREER! WHEN YOU HAVE TIME CHECK OUT WWW.ilike.com, SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF IT ALREADY...IT INTEGRATES WITH MYSPACE, FACEBOOK AND ITUNES..IT'S A COOL WAY TO PROMOTE AND MANAGE YOUR MUSIC!
www.ilike.com
AS YOU ALL KNOW, WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR WAYS TO HELP FURTHER YOUR MUSIC MINISTRY AND CAREER! WHEN YOU HAVE TIME CHECK OUT WWW.ilike.com, SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF IT ALREADY...IT INTEGRATES WITH MYSPACE, FACEBOOK AND ITUNES..IT'S A COOL WAY TO PROMOTE AND MANAGE YOUR MUSIC!
www.ilike.com
Thursday, December 17, 2009
MUSIC BUSINESS HEADS INTO THE VIRUTAL WORLD
BRAD STONE and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: December 15, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — With its deal this month to buy the Web music service Lala, Apple may be pointing the way to the future of music.
In this future, the digital music files on people’s computers could join vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs in the dusty vault of fading music formats.
Instead, music fans will use their always-online computers and smartphones to visit a vast Internet jukebox, where Gregorian chants, Lady Gaga tracks and the several centuries of music in between are instantly available.
For a small but growing cadre of music lovers, the vision is not that outlandish. Josh Newman, a 30-year-old technology consultant from Toronto who travels widely, pays $16 a month for Spotify, a subscription music service that, for now, is officially available only in Europe. Spotify allows unlimited listening to its online music library.
Since Spotify introduced an application for the iPhone over the summer, Mr. Newman has begun listening to the service almost exclusively, even though he has 35,000 songs on hard drives at home.
“The irony is, I don’t even go back to that music,” Mr. Newman said. “I’m almost too lazy. If there’s an artist I want to check out, I’d rather listen to it on Spotify than have to dig through my collection.”
The idea of a limitless jukebox in the sky — or in tech-speak, “in the cloud” — has been around for some time, but it is consuming music executives who now associate the word “funk” with more than just a musical genre. The recording industry, which had $40 billion in annual sales a decade ago, is now bringing in half that. More ominously, the growth of revenue from digital downloads, still only a fifth of the total sales pie, is slowing.
The deal for the little-known Lala was a small one from Apple’s perspective; the price was more than $80 million, according to a person briefed on the deal terms. But it is generating a lot of interest because of what it may say about Apple’s plans for streaming music.
With an estimated $2 billion in annual revenue from iTunes, Apple is in a good position to guide consumers through the process of storing their music collections on Web servers and listening to them in new ways. It can also tightly integrate such a music service into the iPhone, the iPod Touch and all other existing and future Apple gadgets that connect to the Internet.
Users would no longer have to synchronize their music collections between devices, would not have to worry about running out of storage space on their phone, and could more easily share playlists and recommendations with friends.
Apple could also ask users to pay a monthly subscription fee for access to a Spotify-like cloud-based catalog of music. Two music industry executives said Apple had been considering such a subscription service for years, but could never agree on the right revenue split with labels.
“We generally don’t comment on our purpose and plans,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman.
David Pakman, a partner at the venture capital firm Venrock and the former chief executive of the download service eMusic, said that Apple “could accelerate the move to media in the cloud more quickly than any other company can.” The acquisition of Lala, he said, “tells us they’re doing it.”
Other recent developments in the music and technology businesses also suggest an impending shift in a century-long approach to music, in which people considered it to be something they owned, either in physical formats or digitally on their computers.
In August, Spotify introduced its iPhone application, which stores temporary copies of songs and playlists on the phone so that music keeps playing even when the device drops off the network. Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, said subscriber numbers had jumped significantly since the introduction of the app; he would not give exact figures.
The iPhone application “was a huge step toward a paradigm shift where it’s no longer about à la carte purchases, but access to music,” Mr. Ek said.
Spotify, based in London, hopes to introduce its service in the United States at the beginning of next year, although people briefed on its discussions with music companies say that the labels were resisting a component of the service in which music would be available free, supported by ads.
Pandora, the free Internet radio service, offers an application that continues to be among the most popular apps for the iPhone, and the company says that 30 percent of its listeners connect over cellphones.
(Page 2 of 2)
Meanwhile, MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, has acquired two cloud music services in the last month, iLike and Imeem. People briefed on discussions inside MySpace say it is developing a subscription music service to complement its free, ad-supported MySpace Music, a joint venture with the four major music labels.
Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, would not discuss specific plans. But he said consumers care less about how music is delivered and more about finding new ways to share and discover music with their friends.
Technology start-ups have hoped for years that the vast selection and convenience of Web-based music offerings would lure people into spending a few dollars a month in subscription fees. That business, for companies like Rhapsody, jointly owned by RealNetworks and MTV, and Napster, a division of Best Buy, has not yet shown real promise.
But with the added appeal that such services can now be accessed on smartphones, many entrepreneurs are reconsidering that model. “There’s nothing sexy about an MP3 on your computer,” said David Hyman, chief executive of Mog, which introduced a subscription service this month called Mog All Access. “I don’t think consumers care where the music is stored, as long as they can get it when they want it.”
Not everyone agrees that music in the cloud will constitute a silver lining for the music industry. Critics say wireless connectivity, particularly on overtaxed networks like AT&T’s in the United States, is still too unreliable to provide a constant stream of music on mobile devices. They also worry that wireless companies will increase charges for data as the streaming of music and video becomes more popular.
It seems likely that the idea of music ownership will never go away, and that newer methods of accessing music will exist alongside old ones. Bobby Mohr, a 23-year-old music fan from Brooklyn who has accumulated 100 gigabytes of songs, keeps some of them on free Web-based storage services, so he can download tracks when he travels and burn them onto CDs to play in the car.
But Mr. Mohr is hesitant to abandon the idea of owning music altogether, citing the unreliability of wireless networks and the fact that his collection would be inaccessible at his job at a police oversight agency, where he is not allowed to use the Internet.
“I like having external hard drives that are troves of my music,” he said. “You just collect it, you have this library. You discover new genres every year and you go through it and look at what you have, and that’s nice.”
Bob Lefsetz, who writes an influential music industry newsletter, the Lefsetz Letter, acknowledged that some people bristle at the idea of not owning their music, but he compared them to people who once said they would never rent a videotape.
“If you ask anybody today, they’ll tell you, ‘I need to own it.’ But once you have these services, you get to the point of, ‘Why would I own it, because I have access to everything?’ ”
Published: December 15, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — With its deal this month to buy the Web music service Lala, Apple may be pointing the way to the future of music.
In this future, the digital music files on people’s computers could join vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs in the dusty vault of fading music formats.
Instead, music fans will use their always-online computers and smartphones to visit a vast Internet jukebox, where Gregorian chants, Lady Gaga tracks and the several centuries of music in between are instantly available.
For a small but growing cadre of music lovers, the vision is not that outlandish. Josh Newman, a 30-year-old technology consultant from Toronto who travels widely, pays $16 a month for Spotify, a subscription music service that, for now, is officially available only in Europe. Spotify allows unlimited listening to its online music library.
Since Spotify introduced an application for the iPhone over the summer, Mr. Newman has begun listening to the service almost exclusively, even though he has 35,000 songs on hard drives at home.
“The irony is, I don’t even go back to that music,” Mr. Newman said. “I’m almost too lazy. If there’s an artist I want to check out, I’d rather listen to it on Spotify than have to dig through my collection.”
The idea of a limitless jukebox in the sky — or in tech-speak, “in the cloud” — has been around for some time, but it is consuming music executives who now associate the word “funk” with more than just a musical genre. The recording industry, which had $40 billion in annual sales a decade ago, is now bringing in half that. More ominously, the growth of revenue from digital downloads, still only a fifth of the total sales pie, is slowing.
The deal for the little-known Lala was a small one from Apple’s perspective; the price was more than $80 million, according to a person briefed on the deal terms. But it is generating a lot of interest because of what it may say about Apple’s plans for streaming music.
With an estimated $2 billion in annual revenue from iTunes, Apple is in a good position to guide consumers through the process of storing their music collections on Web servers and listening to them in new ways. It can also tightly integrate such a music service into the iPhone, the iPod Touch and all other existing and future Apple gadgets that connect to the Internet.
Users would no longer have to synchronize their music collections between devices, would not have to worry about running out of storage space on their phone, and could more easily share playlists and recommendations with friends.
Apple could also ask users to pay a monthly subscription fee for access to a Spotify-like cloud-based catalog of music. Two music industry executives said Apple had been considering such a subscription service for years, but could never agree on the right revenue split with labels.
“We generally don’t comment on our purpose and plans,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman.
David Pakman, a partner at the venture capital firm Venrock and the former chief executive of the download service eMusic, said that Apple “could accelerate the move to media in the cloud more quickly than any other company can.” The acquisition of Lala, he said, “tells us they’re doing it.”
Other recent developments in the music and technology businesses also suggest an impending shift in a century-long approach to music, in which people considered it to be something they owned, either in physical formats or digitally on their computers.
In August, Spotify introduced its iPhone application, which stores temporary copies of songs and playlists on the phone so that music keeps playing even when the device drops off the network. Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, said subscriber numbers had jumped significantly since the introduction of the app; he would not give exact figures.
The iPhone application “was a huge step toward a paradigm shift where it’s no longer about à la carte purchases, but access to music,” Mr. Ek said.
Spotify, based in London, hopes to introduce its service in the United States at the beginning of next year, although people briefed on its discussions with music companies say that the labels were resisting a component of the service in which music would be available free, supported by ads.
Pandora, the free Internet radio service, offers an application that continues to be among the most popular apps for the iPhone, and the company says that 30 percent of its listeners connect over cellphones.
(Page 2 of 2)
Meanwhile, MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, has acquired two cloud music services in the last month, iLike and Imeem. People briefed on discussions inside MySpace say it is developing a subscription music service to complement its free, ad-supported MySpace Music, a joint venture with the four major music labels.
Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, would not discuss specific plans. But he said consumers care less about how music is delivered and more about finding new ways to share and discover music with their friends.
Technology start-ups have hoped for years that the vast selection and convenience of Web-based music offerings would lure people into spending a few dollars a month in subscription fees. That business, for companies like Rhapsody, jointly owned by RealNetworks and MTV, and Napster, a division of Best Buy, has not yet shown real promise.
But with the added appeal that such services can now be accessed on smartphones, many entrepreneurs are reconsidering that model. “There’s nothing sexy about an MP3 on your computer,” said David Hyman, chief executive of Mog, which introduced a subscription service this month called Mog All Access. “I don’t think consumers care where the music is stored, as long as they can get it when they want it.”
Not everyone agrees that music in the cloud will constitute a silver lining for the music industry. Critics say wireless connectivity, particularly on overtaxed networks like AT&T’s in the United States, is still too unreliable to provide a constant stream of music on mobile devices. They also worry that wireless companies will increase charges for data as the streaming of music and video becomes more popular.
It seems likely that the idea of music ownership will never go away, and that newer methods of accessing music will exist alongside old ones. Bobby Mohr, a 23-year-old music fan from Brooklyn who has accumulated 100 gigabytes of songs, keeps some of them on free Web-based storage services, so he can download tracks when he travels and burn them onto CDs to play in the car.
But Mr. Mohr is hesitant to abandon the idea of owning music altogether, citing the unreliability of wireless networks and the fact that his collection would be inaccessible at his job at a police oversight agency, where he is not allowed to use the Internet.
“I like having external hard drives that are troves of my music,” he said. “You just collect it, you have this library. You discover new genres every year and you go through it and look at what you have, and that’s nice.”
Bob Lefsetz, who writes an influential music industry newsletter, the Lefsetz Letter, acknowledged that some people bristle at the idea of not owning their music, but he compared them to people who once said they would never rent a videotape.
“If you ask anybody today, they’ll tell you, ‘I need to own it.’ But once you have these services, you get to the point of, ‘Why would I own it, because I have access to everything?’ ”
Sunday, December 6, 2009
MYSPACE VS.FACEBOOK
MySpace vs. Facebook Face-off by Jake Hartsfield
Jake Hartsfield is a songwriter, producer, touring sound engineer and a member of the TuneCore Marketing Team.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MySpace and Facebook feel like they've always been around, even though both were founded in 2003 – only six years ago. The growth of both entities was incredibly fast and speaks for how quickly technology and the world today are changing. In the last year alone, we’ve seen a number of major power shifts in the world of social media networking. The biggest one being in December 2008 (one year ago) that Facebook passed MySpace in user numbers.
Compete.com reports that Facebook has grown from ~3.4 million unique visits per month in October 2008 to 23+ million unique visits per month in October 2009. Myspace, has actually declined in unique visits per month from ~55 million in October 2008 to ~50 million in October 2009. Clearly, Facebook has taken the social networking community (industry, should we call it?) by storm and is still growing in size and popularity. Yet MySpace is still the number one place people turn to for music. So, when it comes to the social networking communities and the music industry, which service is more important? Do they each play different roles in the career of an artist, or share some of the same roles? Lets look past the numbers and define what each service has become as their roles on the Internet have evolved, and the pros and cons of each.
Myspace – the Beginning
When MySpace was first launched, it grew to become the largest social networking site – most of the users were individuals and used MySpace to connect with friends, plan parties, etc. MySpace was also one of the few sites offering free accounts that allowed bands to sign up and host their music. As MySpace grew in numbers, it also grew as the leading place to look for new music – and when you heard about a band, the first place you looked to find them was MySpace. Even bands that had official websites began using MySpace – if you didn’t have one, you might as well not have existed. If you were looking for a particular band, you knew they’d be on MySpace and you also knew that their page was going to have a music player easily located in the top-right side of the page. This dependability made MySpace a more reliable source for music than artists’ official websites. Every artist’s official website is unique, which means their music player could be anywhere, and it’s usually hard to find – if they have one at all.
The customization that MySpace allowed was very appealing to all users, especially bands. You could make your page exactly the way you wanted it (if you could figure out the html).
Facebook’s Appeal
1. Ease of Use, Networking - In the early adoption of Facebook, people immediately noticed how easy and simple creating a profile was. There was no need to learn html or spend time finding a free pre-made layout to make it look good. It was also much easier to find people, because users were actually encouraged to use their real names.
2. Clean and Organized - A lot of people actually liked how much cleaner and simpler Facebook profiles appeared as opposed to MySpace. With people trying to customize their profiles on MySpace, it was hard to find people’s information, and there was a lot of poorly programmed html, which caused a lot of bugs and unreadable pages.
3. Dynamic Interface - Sharing information was so much easier on Facebook that it prompted people to use Facebook as a platform for sharing ideas and connecting instantly with people on a national scale. It allowed people to be creative and use groups to discuss politics, sports, form organizations, and raise money.
4. The Status Bar – This utterly simple concept encouraged people to visit each other’s Facebook pages more frequently to see what they were doing. The inherent power of the status bar should be apparent after the tremendous hype we’ve seen with Twitter.
5. Less Spam – Facebook – from the beginning – has had much less of a spam problem than MySpace, due to heavy policing by the site admin and Facebook users’ intolerance for it.
These innovations that trumped MySpace in usability and popularity caused the paradigm shift in personal users from MySpace to Facebook.
Why MySpace still holds the spotlight for music
Facebook was not originally intended to be a music website – when it was growing in popularity, in still did not have working music players. Some applications were slowly introduced that allowed people to play their own music on their profile pages, but it didn’t allow bands to create pages. Bands could make fan groups, but couldn’t play music on the actual pages.
MySpace was still everyone’s #1 destination if they wanted to hear music – and the plus side was you didn’t have to be a member of MySpace to visit a band’s profile.
Facebook soon gave into the pressure to give bands profiles on Facebook and introduced pages, which allow bands to have music players, tour calendars, photos, videos, etc. Even with these new options, bands couldn’t customize their profiles the way they could with MySpace, or organize their content exactly the way they wanted it. Facebook became a useful addition to a band’s online presence, but was not the necessity MySpace was.
Similar Features
When Facebook introduced advertising, allowing bands, companies, and individuals to advertise anything they wanted, they offered something that MySpace didn’t have for bands. It was understated, and not as many bands caught on at first as did the larger companies that were using Facebook. Following Facebook’s lead, MySpace tried to make advertising on their site as easy as it is on Facebook…The most obvious difference is that Facebook has a much larger, deeper, and easily-targeted demographic of users, which makes advertising incredibly easy and effective. MySpace has lost most of its personal users, so most of the people looking at the ads are other bands… [Facebook +1]
It’s difficult to create & invite people to events on MySpace, and it’s incredibly easy on Facebook. Creating event pages with fresh media (photos, videos, links) is easy on Facebook. It’s also harder to get the same fan response and interaction on MySpace… [Facebook +1]
MySpace was an easier website to point people to, because everyone was assigned their own URL, defined by their username. Facebook matched MySpace earlier this year when it started allowing people to grab their own URL’s…[draw]
Facebook still doesn’t allow customization of pages, which limits an artist’s creative expression. MySpace lets artists program their page as if it were a completely unique website, allowing artists to feature videos, graphics, and advertisements in whatever form they want…[MySpace +1]
The new google search is beginning to include music results at the top of the list when an artist’s name is searched – it pulls this information primarily from Myspace and Lala. [MySpace +1]
The Verdict
While Facebook is certainly the best place for an artist to advertise and interact with fans, it lacks the appearance of a personal website that MySpace has, and the music player is secondary to the news feed on the page. On MySpace, the music player is the focus of the page, and far more artists have MySpace pages than have complete Facebook pages.
I know of industry folks who will look at a band’s MySpace page before looking at their actual website – (1) to listen to their music, and (2) to see how many friends they have. Yes, the number of MySpace friends you have is still relevant in the industry today. It probably not as accurate as the number of fans you have on your Facebook page, which are much more accessible than your MySpace friends, but it still adds credibility.
I think as more bands begin to adopt Facebook pages and focus on building their fan base through Facebook, the number of fans on a band’s page will carry more weight than the number of “friends” on MySpace. For now, MySpace is still very relevant in the music industry, so I’d recommend having both a strong MySpace and Facebook presence. MySpace for music, Facebook for fan interaction.
Jake Hartsfield is a songwriter, producer, touring sound engineer and a member of the TuneCore Marketing Team.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MySpace and Facebook feel like they've always been around, even though both were founded in 2003 – only six years ago. The growth of both entities was incredibly fast and speaks for how quickly technology and the world today are changing. In the last year alone, we’ve seen a number of major power shifts in the world of social media networking. The biggest one being in December 2008 (one year ago) that Facebook passed MySpace in user numbers.
Compete.com reports that Facebook has grown from ~3.4 million unique visits per month in October 2008 to 23+ million unique visits per month in October 2009. Myspace, has actually declined in unique visits per month from ~55 million in October 2008 to ~50 million in October 2009. Clearly, Facebook has taken the social networking community (industry, should we call it?) by storm and is still growing in size and popularity. Yet MySpace is still the number one place people turn to for music. So, when it comes to the social networking communities and the music industry, which service is more important? Do they each play different roles in the career of an artist, or share some of the same roles? Lets look past the numbers and define what each service has become as their roles on the Internet have evolved, and the pros and cons of each.
Myspace – the Beginning
When MySpace was first launched, it grew to become the largest social networking site – most of the users were individuals and used MySpace to connect with friends, plan parties, etc. MySpace was also one of the few sites offering free accounts that allowed bands to sign up and host their music. As MySpace grew in numbers, it also grew as the leading place to look for new music – and when you heard about a band, the first place you looked to find them was MySpace. Even bands that had official websites began using MySpace – if you didn’t have one, you might as well not have existed. If you were looking for a particular band, you knew they’d be on MySpace and you also knew that their page was going to have a music player easily located in the top-right side of the page. This dependability made MySpace a more reliable source for music than artists’ official websites. Every artist’s official website is unique, which means their music player could be anywhere, and it’s usually hard to find – if they have one at all.
The customization that MySpace allowed was very appealing to all users, especially bands. You could make your page exactly the way you wanted it (if you could figure out the html).
Facebook’s Appeal
1. Ease of Use, Networking - In the early adoption of Facebook, people immediately noticed how easy and simple creating a profile was. There was no need to learn html or spend time finding a free pre-made layout to make it look good. It was also much easier to find people, because users were actually encouraged to use their real names.
2. Clean and Organized - A lot of people actually liked how much cleaner and simpler Facebook profiles appeared as opposed to MySpace. With people trying to customize their profiles on MySpace, it was hard to find people’s information, and there was a lot of poorly programmed html, which caused a lot of bugs and unreadable pages.
3. Dynamic Interface - Sharing information was so much easier on Facebook that it prompted people to use Facebook as a platform for sharing ideas and connecting instantly with people on a national scale. It allowed people to be creative and use groups to discuss politics, sports, form organizations, and raise money.
4. The Status Bar – This utterly simple concept encouraged people to visit each other’s Facebook pages more frequently to see what they were doing. The inherent power of the status bar should be apparent after the tremendous hype we’ve seen with Twitter.
5. Less Spam – Facebook – from the beginning – has had much less of a spam problem than MySpace, due to heavy policing by the site admin and Facebook users’ intolerance for it.
These innovations that trumped MySpace in usability and popularity caused the paradigm shift in personal users from MySpace to Facebook.
Why MySpace still holds the spotlight for music
Facebook was not originally intended to be a music website – when it was growing in popularity, in still did not have working music players. Some applications were slowly introduced that allowed people to play their own music on their profile pages, but it didn’t allow bands to create pages. Bands could make fan groups, but couldn’t play music on the actual pages.
MySpace was still everyone’s #1 destination if they wanted to hear music – and the plus side was you didn’t have to be a member of MySpace to visit a band’s profile.
Facebook soon gave into the pressure to give bands profiles on Facebook and introduced pages, which allow bands to have music players, tour calendars, photos, videos, etc. Even with these new options, bands couldn’t customize their profiles the way they could with MySpace, or organize their content exactly the way they wanted it. Facebook became a useful addition to a band’s online presence, but was not the necessity MySpace was.
Similar Features
When Facebook introduced advertising, allowing bands, companies, and individuals to advertise anything they wanted, they offered something that MySpace didn’t have for bands. It was understated, and not as many bands caught on at first as did the larger companies that were using Facebook. Following Facebook’s lead, MySpace tried to make advertising on their site as easy as it is on Facebook…The most obvious difference is that Facebook has a much larger, deeper, and easily-targeted demographic of users, which makes advertising incredibly easy and effective. MySpace has lost most of its personal users, so most of the people looking at the ads are other bands… [Facebook +1]
It’s difficult to create & invite people to events on MySpace, and it’s incredibly easy on Facebook. Creating event pages with fresh media (photos, videos, links) is easy on Facebook. It’s also harder to get the same fan response and interaction on MySpace… [Facebook +1]
MySpace was an easier website to point people to, because everyone was assigned their own URL, defined by their username. Facebook matched MySpace earlier this year when it started allowing people to grab their own URL’s…[draw]
Facebook still doesn’t allow customization of pages, which limits an artist’s creative expression. MySpace lets artists program their page as if it were a completely unique website, allowing artists to feature videos, graphics, and advertisements in whatever form they want…[MySpace +1]
The new google search is beginning to include music results at the top of the list when an artist’s name is searched – it pulls this information primarily from Myspace and Lala. [MySpace +1]
The Verdict
While Facebook is certainly the best place for an artist to advertise and interact with fans, it lacks the appearance of a personal website that MySpace has, and the music player is secondary to the news feed on the page. On MySpace, the music player is the focus of the page, and far more artists have MySpace pages than have complete Facebook pages.
I know of industry folks who will look at a band’s MySpace page before looking at their actual website – (1) to listen to their music, and (2) to see how many friends they have. Yes, the number of MySpace friends you have is still relevant in the industry today. It probably not as accurate as the number of fans you have on your Facebook page, which are much more accessible than your MySpace friends, but it still adds credibility.
I think as more bands begin to adopt Facebook pages and focus on building their fan base through Facebook, the number of fans on a band’s page will carry more weight than the number of “friends” on MySpace. For now, MySpace is still very relevant in the music industry, so I’d recommend having both a strong MySpace and Facebook presence. MySpace for music, Facebook for fan interaction.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
NEW MUSIC SHOW
Hey everybody,
I'm kicking off a new Gospel/Christian music television show at the top of the year.. I am looking for and need QUALITY videos and people to interview for the show.. I need QUALITY videos for all styles of modern gospel music! To be considered please send your videos to antonioneal@gmail.com
I'm kicking off a new Gospel/Christian music television show at the top of the year.. I am looking for and need QUALITY videos and people to interview for the show.. I need QUALITY videos for all styles of modern gospel music! To be considered please send your videos to antonioneal@gmail.com
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