MySpace: Artist Death March or Sea of Success

Cries of frustration, despair, immense disrespect and even hatred continually characterize the debate surrounding MySpace whenever it’s on going abandonment of the independent music community is discussed.  Criticizing what MySpace isn’t is like shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, it’s only a fool’s game strictly for those within the artist community who are looking for something or someone to blame for their own lack of success.  I am a half glass full kind of guy that believes the independent music community can take matters into its own hands and shape MySpace into a place of many possibilities, great opportunity and realistic monetization.  Even though it would be nice, we really don’t need MySpace’s help to do it.

At present, like it or not, MySpace is the only website on the planet where every band, musical group and artist of any consequence has a profile page.  Forget for a moment that its tools are second rate and, instead, concentrate on the fact that here is a place where if the environment is right, artists of all kinds can flourish, even without any help from MySpace.  Ask not what MySpace can do for you but what you can do to make MySpace work incredibly well for you.  Everybody wants a musical messiah to come down from the heavens and create a miracle website that all true musical artists can migrate to and be one with the universe.  Even if such a site were to exist, with the immense quantity of sites in the music Internet space and its confusion and fragmentation, it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Your time would be much better spent elsewhere doing something really productive.  Musical artists are some of the most resourceful people in the world.  They need to stop complaining and start acting within MySpace in their own self interest and benefit.   

With MySpace having every band and all these bands having millions of fans, it has given us the best possible starting place for every artist to build a “true” fan base and a sustainable business model. What artists need to do is to create, piece by piece, by collaborating between themselves and with companies who really care about helping to develop artists’ careers, a useful ecosystem within which they can flourish and make lots of money.  So I say stop bitching and start acting !!!  Let’s show MySpace that we can use them instead of them using us. Their missed opportunity will become our salvation.