What Bands Should Know About the Myspace Relaunch

If you haven’t received a notice or saw the posts, Myspace has relaunched with an all-new look. I found my email invitation in the spam folder. So what does this star-studded relaunch mean for musicians?

Probably nothing.

Myspace has tried multiple times to resurrect itself, though it was unsuccessful each time. We’ll see if Justin Timberlake and loads of money can make it work this time.

All social media sites can come and go, but if you a Myspace (chances are, you do) and if you want to have it set up just in case the relaunch brings fans back, then you’ll want to do these things:

• New Layout: Learn that layout quick. The days of free, hot Myspace themed layouts are gone (that’s definitely for the better).
• Old Content Gone: If you had photo albums or other information, most of that has been wiped out. Your videos are also gone. Pretty much, everything you uploaded except your profile photo is gone. However, once you activate your account again, you can import your old photo albums in the new profile. You’ll have to enter your new pitch, bio, and contact information though.
• More Music: Myspace is now pulling in music from other services to stream nearly everything you have now.
• New Connections: While it still tracks your fan count, it also shows how you are connected with fans. It also allows you to reward your top fans with exclusive content by ranking their interactions with you.

Bear in mind that if you want to edit your page, you’ll have to sign the new Terms of Use Agreement. Part of that is agreeing to pay fees whenever Myspace decides it wants to charge for certain services. Once you agree to the terms, it will ask if you want to import your old photos or playlists.

After that, you’ll see this screen, to help better define your channel:

After that, you’ll see how you can edit the collapsible Myspace layout for bands:

Keep in mind that your profile photo, like Facebook, will be square. Crop your press shots accordingly (or use a logo).

The new “cover image” is huge (800×600) and serves more like a background. When you sign in, there will be a guided tour to help you with each of the elements.

You’ll also want to check the music section, as I noticed that many similar sounding band names were brought in as matches as well.

When it comes to uploading music, prepare to be frustrated: even though it says you can upload an album at once, the process is very clunk. For example, even if you prepare an album by giving its title, artwork, release date, and genre, when you upload songs from it, you’ll have to do this every time for each individual song. There is no convenient way to batch it and apply all of the tags together. If you have multiple albums, this becomes quite tedious. Also, you won’t be able to remove songs that are incorrectly attributed to your artist profile. So be sure to set some time aside for this.

All in all, it will probably take an hour or two of setup but given that sites like ReverbNation and Sonicbids still use Myspace fan counts as metrics for your profiles, you might as well give your old profile a fresh look.

If anything, updating your links and information will help your own website’s SEO, as well as ensures that good information is available on you.

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Simon Tam is the President and Founder of Last Stop Booking, author of How to Get Sponsorships and Endorsements, and performs in dance rock band The Slants. Simon’s writing on music and marketing can be found at www.laststopbooking.com. He is on Twitter @SimonTheTam