Tuesday, November 25, 2008

I Hate MySpace

For years MySpace has been the de facto music social network. I wonder why, because it sucks like a super massive black hole. That statement may not surprise you, but for me it is a surprise that MySpace still gathers more and more bands to promote their music.

To be honest I had a MySpace profile. I don't really remember why did I register. Maybe I was doing it because everybody else was doing it and people usually search for music samples from MySpace. But I know well why I don't want to use it anymore:

It is slow

The pages download creepingly slowly. Of course one page can be a bandwidth nightmare when it is full of videos, photos and a background image size of a football stadium - and it is the profile administrator's fault that the page is like that. But it is interesting how much rope MySpace gives to its users to allow them hang themselves.

Of course I shouldn't care - I kept my own profile clean and simple - but all the other pages generating a massive load for the whole service caused that the single most important thing on my profile was slow as well: The music player.

Bad music streams

MySpace renewed their player few months ago and the player is quite ok now, but the streams are still sluggish. Sometimes it takes so long time before the song starts that I have left the page already. Not good for me, not good for the artist which could have been The Next Big Thing. Not only that but also the sound quality is weak. And you can't put very many songs to your profile, let alone organize them as albums.

Awful user interface

The profile layout is not very appealing, but the whole mess to upkeep your profile is something that even MySpace Tom can't be its friend.

Inflation of friendship

Friends, friends, friends... and almost all of them people I have never heard before. Do I need to say more?

Lack of plays

MySpace by itself does not very much improve your promotion. You have to advertise your music actively everywhere to gain attention. Social networking via so called friends does not generate very much good traffic. And by good I don't mean only quantity but also quality.

Last.fm does it better

I simply like last.fm. You have unlimited space for your songs, bitrate is not limited, it has numerous way to promote your music, there are radio channels, tags, groups and recommendations derived from its users' listening habits. I am not very known, still my songs get played once in a while. And what is more interesting: They also pay royalties also for the independent artists. I have earned only pennies and cents, but the principle is right.

Because last.fm does the job so well and I don't want to double my workload by keeping two profiles in separate services the choice was easy: I left MySpace.

2 comments:

  1. Hey there,

    Besides the reasons you mentioned, facebook is rapidly becoming bigger hen myspace... its over with tom & friends :)

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  2. Hey i know what you mean.

    We built a loyal fan base who all opted in as friends of our band. when we sent them info about our new release through myspace, they deleted our profile. Now thats lame, as all these people wanted to hear from us.

    Myspace is so last year, even facebook wont let you set up a profile as a band (even though you can register as a band) what is it with these ppl. perhaps myspace is shutting out the indies now that they have a myspace music deal with the majors.

    Anyway enough ads for lame social sites living in the dark ages, get yourself over to Reverbnation.com dude, they know how to tread bands.

    Agree about Last FM too good stuff...

    Mood: No Myspace - Free at last!!

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