In Desperate Need of Attention: Myspace

[jforsythe]

So I just finished my new CD after about 8 months of work, and I figured "I'll just post and promote my music on Myspace, do nothing, and get millions upon millions of screaming fans". Well, after about a month, I still have about the same number of friends and nobody's screaming other than me. I really don't do much to promote on Myspace, so I was wondering if any of you Myspace musicians had any suggestions as how to get my music around. If any of you get a chance, please take a listen to the songs on my profile and let me know what you think. Thanks.

 

[Shannon]

Yeah, I have a suggestion. Get off your butt and start promoting! You have over 60 million people there to promote to. No one, I repeat, NO ONE is just gonna magically discover you. MySpace is a vehicle to get your music out there. You have to be very diligent, otherwise no one will know who you are. That's just the plain ole truth.

 

[David]

are you part of any groups? If not, click on the groups tab, sign up, post bulletins, post threads about it. People will probably add you if they can SEE you. The other thing to do, is to go down the line on musician forums and add everyone yourself. There are what, millions of myspace "bands," so it's virtually impossible to find you by chance. Just get out in the myspace community!

 

[jforsythe]

Yeah, I understand that now, but HOW do I go about by promoting on Myspace? Do I just ask thousands of random people to be Friends? I need some very specific suggestions because I work two jobs and don't have the time to be on the computer for large amounts of time.

I haven't been able to promote on the local level yet because my CD's have yet to return from the duplicator, but I figured I'd get a head start on Myspace.

Since I recorded all instruments on the demo myself, I'm gonna have to put a band together to perform this stuff. I haven't been involved in my local music scene in about 4 or 5 years since I started doing audio engineering full-time, and all the people I used to jam with have either quit music or are off touring with a band somewhere. Is Myspace a good resource to find musicians? I'm pretty apprehensive about searching for musicians on a website because I don't want to have to deal with wierdos.

 

[Shannon]

Unfortunately, promoting on there takes quite a bit of time. David's post has some good suggestions.

 

[Ken]

I listened to The Morning. I didn't hear anything that sounded exactly like someone else. Nice tune.

As for promo, I did this same thing about 10 years ago (!). Back then, I had a website devoted to 7-string guitars with a nice little following and I just pimped my music on the site. Word spread, people helped me out. Now I only have about 70 copies left out of 1100. Today it's much harder to use the internet as a distribution method because there are SO many websites/bands trying to do the same thing.

My suggestion to you is to give it time. You've only had CDs out for a month. You're out supporting it live (I saw show dates), you're putting it out on forums like this.

In short, you're doing everything right, you just can't expect fame and fortune after a month. You're finding out the same life lesson I did. You busted you ass writing/recording/producing your CD. Once the CDs are on your doorstep, then the work REALLY begins.

If you know who your target audience is, maybe find websites that they frequent and place an ad on them. I suspect this site is not your target audience. Your song has great production, tight playing, and catchy hooks, but we're all immune to such things. Now, if you had some jaw-dropping solos and semi-naked women on the cover, you might get some sales out of here.

 

[David]

**just read the next post... I edited it and it reposted for some reason**

 

[eleven59]

http://groups.myspace.com/musiciansexchange

I know it's just the way the words look all mashed together, but that's funny as hell

 

[David]

Like I said, sign up (just click join... that's all you got to do) on the groups, copy and paste a same promotional thread to these groups.

http://groups.myspace.com/nyammusic
http://groups.myspace.com/musiciansexchange
http://groups.myspace.com/PunkMusicDotCom
http://groups.myspace.com/geetars

That could take, maybe 5 minutes tops.



and about your personal myspace page... referring to yourself in 3rd person, to me, makes you sound like an ass. If you're trying to connect with people, talk to them from you.

EDIT:
oh yeah... and...

Since I recorded all instruments on the demo myself, I'm gonna have to put a band together to perform this stuff. I haven't been involved in my local music scene in about 4 or 5 years since I started doing audio engineering full-time, and all the people I used to jam with have either quit music or are off touring with a band somewhere. Is Myspace a good resource to find musicians? I'm pretty apprehensive about searching for musicians on a website because I don't want to have to deal with wierdos.

Realize everyone else on Myspace... aren't just a bunch of weirdos. If everyone is, then you too are. Other people looking for other musicians are going to think your a wack-job too at first. Another thing, that's hard about finding musicians when you write it all yourself, is that they're looking to create their own music. If it's already created, what do you personally have to offer? If the band as a whole wrote the music together, thats where the gratification comes in.

I know it's just the way the words look all mashed together, but that's funny as hell

hahahhahaa, that's hilarious

 

[Cancer]

In my old band, when we first put music up on Myspace we had the same problem, now we get 3-4 new friends weekly, how?

There probably is no specific way but what worked for us is the following:

1. Make friends: sounds stupid but it works, and try to initially find people that you actually know, as opposed to random "here's my band , be my friend", those seems to deleted more than likely, and your friends with visit your page to hear what you're up to, raising your numbers. What the goal is here is take adavntage of your friends network of friends to spread the cause.

1a. Make sure you have a music profile, I've seen some bands use personal pages and then send people to their regular site, this is ok, but you can't really take advantage of the networking features this way, AND I've heard cases of pages being shut down, or charged more for hosting, because of the increase in traffic. Myspace is free, and you can't beat free.

2. If you play with a band that has a MySpace, make sure you add them for chrissakes, and leave a comment, more on this later.

3. Make sure your page looks good because, eventually, unless you're like Metallica, your MySpace page WILL get more traffic than your thisismyband.com page. Some musicians have huge problems with this, god alone knows why...

3a. To keep your page looking good you need to police it, make sure no one puts a comment that knocks your page out of whack, and if something does mess up your page, delete it...immediately.

3b. Creating layouts can be a real bitch if you don't like HTML and CSS, but there are tons of free layout site, and if you don't mind a little experimentation, you can get good results. Don't have time to do your page, get someone (a kid preferably, or some peep on your street team) to do it for you. If you're lucky you my find an addict (like me) who will do it for free.

4. As a rule of thumb, whoever asks for a friend request (exception can be made if they offend your band idealogy), accept it, the goal here is numbers, it's cool to edit peeps on your personal pages, but keep your eye on the prize for the band page. My personal page gets it friends edited for the silliest of reasons, but you'l have to pretty much put a gun to my head for me to do the same on our band page.

My theory here: let them delete you if they don't want you.​

5. Comments are your friend. EVERYONE you accept should get a "thanks for adding" comment, and if you're good with HTML, you can leave comments with embedded html. Why is this cool??? Since its HTML, if you change the code in one location, its changes all the other comments you left, its the effect of a billboard, with ads that change at your command, this alone is responsible for our current friends addition rate. And yes this works with flash, very very cool... I usually make it so if they click on the comment it takes them to my myspace page.

6. The next time you play a show, take pics of the crowd from the stage, and in addition to your band photos, add them to your pics page, I try to change these after each show. Make sure you make a bulletin to tell everyone about it (yes they will go to your page to look). If you play a place that has people not on your friends list, they will be after this.

7. MySpace Events is a godsend. you can send out invitations based off of zip code and radius to that zip code, this is such a cool feature I can't even begin to describe. I usually do invites to a 50 miles radius depending on whats going on. What great about this is events are searchable by EVERYONE, not just people on your friends list. Poweful stuff.

8. Download and install Opera. Not only is it a great browser, but it rules for geting around MySpace quickly. I usually do all of my promotion work with no images and user mode turned on, takes some getting used to, but it much quicker to get around that way, since you don't have to wait for every little thing to load.

If this sounds like work, it is, but I'm addicted to MySpace (prolly spend a good 4 hours a day there), but if you devote 20 minutes a day to it, I guarantee you will see results.

 

[jforsythe]

Thanks alot for your help, everyone. You gave some really constructive advice.

LRealize everyone else on Myspace... aren't just a bunch of weirdos. If everyone is, then you too are.

I didn't mean that all people on Myspace are wierdos. I've had some bad experiences with classified ads in musician newpapers and such, and I just figured Myspace would be viewable to a whole lot more volume of people, thus a larger quantity of wierdos than normal.

 

[noodles]

8. Download and install Opera. Not only is it a great browser, but it rules for geting around MySpace quickly. I usually do all of my promotion work with no images and user mode turned on, takes some getting used to, but it much quicker to get around that way, since you don't have to wait for every little thing to load.

Another option is Greasemonkey for Firefox. It is a scripting engine, and there are a ton of scripts out their related to Myspace. I've got ones that keep the backgrounds, video, and music from even loading.

 

[Drew]

5. Comments are your friend. EVERYONE you accept should get a "thanks for adding" comment, and if you're good with HTML, you can leave comments with embedded html. Why is this cool??? Since its HTML, if you change the code in one location, its changes all the other comments you left, its the effect of a billboard, with ads that change at your command, this alone is responsible for our current friends addition rate. And yes this works with flash, very very cool... I usually make it so if they click on the comment it takes them to my myspace page.

FWIW, without exception I delete comments with imbedded images. Why? They piss me off. If you want to post up a banner for your band or an ad for you newest show, I feel that someone else's band page is not the place to be doing that. A signature-style link is one thing; a graphic of any sort without fail gets axed. I just feel it looks cluttered and is kind of rude.