I never expected I would end up writing this article, but I came across a very interesting infographic yesterday evening ("What makes someone leave your website?") and it got me soon thinking about Myspace. More importantly, I suddenly wondered if I would ever go back to using Myspace as I used to and from there, what it would actually take in terms of profound changes for me to get over our "irreconcilable differences".
Since the site was at its peak (and that was a long time ago...), times have radically changed and many amazing new artist-centric tools have appeared and made their mark, allowing anyone to set up a (more often than not) free profile in just a few minutes.
They could inititally (very summarily) be split into three categories :
1. Those who aimed at becoming an artist hub and/or control tower: Reverbnation, Bandcentral, Artistdata to name a few, as well as Facebook (to the point many start ups have launched and gained funding on the sole basis of being facebook apps despite its own in-house ones : Rootmusic being just an example);
2. Those who focused on a particular aspect of an artist's career : Soundcloud & Official.fm (sharing music), Bandcamp (direct-to-fan music sales), Songkick & Bandsintown (concerts), Youtube, Dailymotion & Vimeo (video hosting), etc. etc.;
3. Those, in a slightly different register (I call them “directory sites” or “referencing enhancers”): Viinyl, Onesheet and About.me in another register.
[Please note: there are many other artist tools that have launched that are absolutely fabulous like Fanbridge that I am purposely not mentioning as they do not aim to replace, even in part, Myspace as it was at its zenith.]
Then again, many of these websites' specificities started to fade as a great majority added new features : Bandcamp now allows artists to feature upcoming concerts as well as a bio and their five key websites, Youtube includes an in-house "concerts" widget, Tumblr exploded from the moment it allowed the creation of proper web pages on top of their blogging features, etc.. etc.. the list goes on and the point here isn't really to exhaustively list them.
Sure, Myspace hasn't been replaced by a single competitor but does that really matter and how can the situation of the internet then and now compare given the many changes of environment?
Myspace was king partly because it was the only website of its time that so clearly focused on music: when the internet wasn't as developed and the idea of creating one's own "space" was revolutionary because if you had any notion of doing it anywhere else, you had to be a real developper with more than proper html notions; when SEO was still a concept in its infancy and the general consciousness of its potential was far from widespread.
So why go back to using Myspace as the main hub for an artist today, especially since the site's own rise and fall (not to mention the disastrous consequences of Myspace's acquisition of Imeem and its ensuing brutal disappearance) has demonstrated how important it is for an artist to have his/her own website he or she can control from scratch and not be dependant on the various buy-outs and changes of strategy?
For it's still many users and good SEO? Great, but not enough. Oh yes: when you click on a song on the myspace player, it opens in a new window. A real deal-breaker, for sure. And… well, that’s about it.
And then, there are the cons, the things that are really annoying, way beyond what any of the benefits listed above can compensate for:
- The excruciatingly slow updating system;
- A terrible design where customisation (even just for colors) is heavily limited and principle of the basic layout has not changed since the beginning;
- The compulsory advertising bloc that changes all the time so you it never blends into your colours (and who still clicks on that anyway?);
- The weird transformation of your website address into an “msp.links.and-endless-numbers-with-letters-actually-going-beyond-the-borders-of-myspace-s-very-own-bloc-design”;
- The fact that you cannot have anything but the myspace player as you first and main bloc and you cannot embed a more fluid player from a competitor like soundcloud or bandcamp anymore;
- In general : very bad embeddable features of myspace apps anywhere else;
- The fact that only the content uploaded into myspace (music, photos, videos, etc..) appears in each “page” section: I don’t want to have to upload my stuff for the millionth time unless it’s an exclusive;
- ...And so on and so forth.
Maybe the first thing to work on is going back to the main reasons people want to use online tools in the first place :
1. Simplicity
2. Near full customisation possibilities
3. A home with visibility (ie well referenced) where fans, professionals know they will find all the artist's key info but also where the first can interact with the artist and the second can see at what stages of this interaction the artist is
4. A free or near free tool that doesn't look cheap
And right now, Myspace is missing out on all of these points.
Myspace might be well inspired to check out their French equivalent. Launched in 2009, it is a free tool where an artist can create his/her page with a pic and a few mp3s. The only major difference from the start was that the artists had to be reviewed qualitatively and approved by the partner A&Rs before the artist's profile could appear publicly. There was a selection but once you were approved, you had friends, could upload any of your songs and update your status just like on Myspace. The background design and customization is more qualitative, though. But where Noomiz has done much better than Myspace is by positionning itself directly as an A&R tool and dealing an exclusive partnership with labels from the start and encouraging artists to sign up and, as they needed to be approved by the A&R teams, it meant there was a much bigger chance the artist would get heard by a talent scout.
Since the launch, Noomiz have broadened the concept of "being spotted" and made it evolve towards real-life events and realisations: every month, not only do they transparently reveal which band is meeting which A&R, but they also regularly organise "NIP" parties where selected bands play at L'International, a cool live venue in Paris, while 9 influential webzines choose their top 3 favorite bands from the site every month. From there, Noomiz also concluded a crucial partnership with Radio Néo, a young independant radio that exclusively broadcasts French developing bands (many sing in English), and then went on to associate as main sponsors for a young digital art festival called "&TheBitGoesOn", where the 10 selected Noomiz artists send in 3 of their tracks for MotionGraphers, VJs, digital creatives and developers to choose from and do their best to illustrate in a 24 hour contest.
This editorial strategy has done much to anchor Noomiz in the French music scene as a trusted and therefore sought-after partner for unsigned bands and developing artists.
Here are a few other, non exhaustive, complementary ideas that revolve around what I will be looking for in the new Myspace to decide wether or not to give it some proper attention again :
- Focus on new potential partners rather than obsessing over traditional direct competitors (be they free - Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr - or not - Nimbit, etc..) : associations and in depth partnerships are begging to be concluded with Sonicbids-Artisdata (proper partnerships I mean), Songkick / Bandsintown, Spotify / Deezer etc..;
- Add value by going moving past the sole use of the platform and think of exclusives (beyond the Noomiz example) : backstage passes, special musician contests (ie sonicbids offers for festivals, opening slots, synch opportunities);
- Explore freemium : with two complementary plans (a free version with reduced features & a premium (low fee) ad-free enhanced version that gives access to opportunites listed in the previous suggestion);
- Offer better analytics (in the premium version for example): partnership with Next Big Sound / Google analytics ?
- Simplifaction / modernisation of the html codes available to update a widget (iframe still not compatible!)
- Consider a glocal implementation, with a market by market launch : bearing in mind the Noomiz strategy and approach, it would make more sense to take the time to study each market and its ecosystem before making the mistake of yet again blindly importing an American concept with a "one-size-fits-all" philosophy.
I don't know what Specific Media have exactly in mind and for sure, with Justin Timberlake and a whole focus on artists and sharing exclusive opportunities, it is intriguing and will at least prick our ears and get us to listen to what they say when they finally launch, but will it be enough?
Call me a hardened skeptic, but without a huge tech overhaul, a big dose of humility and a major shift from the obsession of control to the will to welcome apps and integration from outside the Myspace eco-system, I honestly doubt so.
