Every artist wants to be noticed, and you don’t need a label anymore to do it. That also means that musicians must learn how to market themselves. The primary way people discover music these days is through the internet and the recommendations of their friends. Therefore, if you want to be noticed, you need to know where all the fans are hanging out.
Two sites may come to mind immediately: Facebook and YouTube. Facebook allows you to communicate directly with your fanbase, while YouTube lets you post videos of your performances. But there’s a third social media site that has reinvented itself into a music sharing hub. That site is Myspace.
Back in 2006 when Myspace was at its height, there was more musical activity on that site alone than any other site on the web according to Jupiter Research. But then Facebook’s rise quickly overshadowed Myspace and then a disastrous buyout destroyed it further. A new company bought the site in 2011 and their work is starting to show results.
In the year 2013, visits to the site increased by 469% according to Comstock and they are continuing to grow. The reason for this is Myspace’s decision to focus solely on music and video content. Unlike more personal listening sites like Spotify or Pandora, Myspace focuses on musical connections between your friends and with musicians and other artists.
Many independent artists are even using Myspace as their main website because it the users of the site are so music-focused. Unlike most other social media sites, an account is not necessary to view a Myspace page. This gives a big advantage if you need to suddenly change your tour around.
If you’re worried about ads driving away your visitors, they’ve cut way back from when NewsCorp owned the site. Myspace uses its very large database of user information and sells it to advertisers as its main source of revenue. Then again, that’s how most social media sites make money.
If you’ve got an old Myspace account and you’ve gotten into professional music since your teens, it may be worth your while to blow the dust off your profile and turn it into a music portfolio. Perhaps even more important than fan connections are the connections you can make with other bands and other music industry professionals. Depending on your band’s fanbase, you may even be able to ditch Facebook entirely and use Myspace and YouTube for your social media. If you’re targeting teens or those who dig through the site for Throwback Thursday photos, it’s worth a shot.
Article provided by Adficient.com, a PPC management and SEO agency.