Musicians and MySpace
By Jamie Peck

MySpace is a social networking website with over one hundred million users to date. The purpose of MySpace is to connect with people, which is exactly what an aspiring music artist needs to do to build their brand awareness. Musicians have the ability to announce upcoming shows and communicate with their audience: including representatives from newspapers, venues, radio, and of course fans.

In order to build a fan base, musicians use MySpace to build a music profile; this essentially free advertising space. They build this fan base by keeping an updated profile, logging on daily, adding new friends, commenting on other profiles, sharing music of course, and other MySpace activities to increase their “presence” on the site. All of this with the ultimate goal of communicating with a record label.

With the right public display of talent, a musician has the ability to attract thousands of visitors to their page daily. This fan base is essential for success as most record labels use this information to determine the profitability of signing the musician to their label.
Musicians also use MySpace to “set the record straight”. Some musicians already successful in their career, may post blogs correcting a statement that was misunderstood or to give their opinion on a popular media topic. Blogging is a massive driver of traffic to a popular music artist’s page. It often creates controversy, interest, and adds depth to the user’s profile.

These are just some of the ways that musicians use MySpace. It is a great way for fans to see other dimensions of an artist and feel as though they are “behind the scenes”. This particular form of social media is growing every day as more musicians attempt to grow their audience. Whether you agree with this less traditional form of exposure or not, it is not going to slow down any time soon. Unless you have the ability to travel at light speed, there is no other medium that will expose your talent to as many different audiences as the internet.