I’ve not liked Myspace for while now. It’s just a massive forum for people to add fake friends, and gather numbers of “followers”. I could name names, but won’t (the sly amongst you will know).
When I go to their Myspace (I do occasionally check…) I find they’re through 30,000 “followers” whereas my own band… well… a few, but a modest number, however – when you go to last.fm where REAL people go the situation is somewhat reversed… in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s almost logarithmic!
last.fm gathers (with your permission) stats on who is listening to what, and how many times, and when. I subscribe to it, as do quite a few people I know, and as such you can see some of the embarrassing contents of my music collection (and I get to see theirs). It stands to reason something gathering such information is going to tell slightly more truthful figures than something just showing you web pages and grubbing “adds”, after all, how often do you see an actual realistic dialogue about the band in question in the comments section? – it’s usually just “thanks for the add, please see my band play here on…”
Yep. Myspace is thoroughly shit.
Meanwhile, I’m at a bit of a crossroads with Facebook. I will be keeping my account – I have decided that now, but I’m pissed off with:
- Facebooks clusterfuck of a security system.
- Not friends… you know the type – people you never really liked at school, but they think everything will have magically changed.
- Musicians. Yes, sorry, but I’m becoming of the opinion that far too many musicians are egocentric self promoting arseholes who are only in it for the feeling of being the centre of attention. What’s up fucktards, don’t you have REAL friends? just fans?… Can’t you play your stuff for the pleasure of actually ENJOYING what you do, even if occasionally it actually costs you money to get your arse into a minibus and traipse half way across the country/world?
(I would like to add, in particular, one rather well known musician who preaches about piracy with one breath and then watches pirated movies on his tour bus with the next… and for a few years in the early-mid 00’s went right off the boil although redeemed himself with the last album)