Jupiter Research, usually a pretty good source for third party anaylsis, has recently placed MySpace Music above other rivals in being successful at promoting music. However, the report was suspect, in my opinion, not only in the way it was conducted, but also by which sites they covered.
First, the rivals to Myspace Music, as defined by this Jupiter Research Report, were Yahoo Music, MTV.com, and AOL Music. This essentially limits the list to 5 sites… not exactly a deep core sample among the universe of music community sites. Perhaps they were asleep at the wheel, but to disregard last.fm, a site that has been in existence in one form or another for 5 or so years is ludicrous.
MySpace is junk. The site was poorly architected, and poorly coded, and uses an outdated development framework for ColdFusion. The design is atrocious, and I’m not talking about the customizations featured on individual profiles, either. With that said, MySpace, due to it’s size and supposed reach still can not be ignored. As far as promoting music goes, the study tracked promotional activity, across the five sites, on the Black Eyed Peas, whose recent sell-out come back was already generating plenty of buzz elsewhere before they exploited these community sites, which in my mind skews the results significantly. Think about it… the BEPs were being shoved down our throats long before they invaded community sites as “one of us”.
Sure you’ll have results if you’re a big label buying space on the front page of MySpace Music, but what about the independents? A quick pass through the pages of MySpace and you’ll soon realize that all of this “community activity” is primarily made up of disingenuous “Thanks for the Add” billboard size graphics posted by your “friends” in your comments, bulletins that go largely ignored, RSVPs to Events that are accepted but not attended… the list goes on. So where are all the powerful promotion opportunities on these sites?
If MySpace is your only website, then you’re already loosing half the promotional battle right there. From where I’m standing, one of the biggest values you can gain from MySpace is in back links. If you don’t have a site to link to, get one. No one is going to take you very seriously, anyway, if the only link you’ve got to give them is a MySpace address. If you do have a site, then make it the center of your web presence, and use MySpace as an auxiliary or what I like to call passive marketing site. MySpace is a huge site, with hundreds of thousands upon thousands (if not more) pages. All indexed by Google and the other search engines. This means that links from this site are weighted pretty heavily in their Search Algorithms, and you can take advantage of it by making sure you post your links throughout the site… on your profile, in your bulletins, and in your blog posts (you are using the blog on MySpace aren’t you?). This will ensure that your site will get better ranking (over time) in the search engines. You’ll also discover (if you haven’t already) that one of your biggest referrers is MySpace, if you have access to your site’s log files. Referrers, for those that don’t know, are the sites that your visitors were on before they clicked over to your site. Now for these to work you’ll need to ensure that anywhere you post your Site’s URL is clickable, but once these two forces (back links and referrals) start to go to work you should see your traffic steadily climb, and the percentage of traffic from MySpace increase.
With your site firmly re-centered as your web presence, you can now start treating MySpace as an auxiliary publishing platform for your marketing messages. Post tracks that you’re giving away on your site. Re-post news and events, and even better if they are enticing excerpts with links back to the main story on your site. Use the bulletins, and blog features to get the word out, but don’t expect a ton of traffic. Basically treat it as a copy+paste dumping ground for repurposing your other marketing. No one on MySpace is really reading it anyway, but at least it will be there for the small percentage of people that are following you on MySpace. Concentrate your efforts there to convert MySpace fans to tracking you on your web site, with your newsletters and other updates, and not relying on MySpace to do it for you. If you’ve got e-commerce capabilities, on your site or with some other service, then feature links to buy your album front-and-center on your MySpace profile. Give visitors to your profile the opportunity to buy from you, as it may be your only chance to get their attention and keep it long enough from them to support you at what you do.
There is no magic bullet when it comes to music marketing. You already know this. Community sites such as MySpace are great for passive marketing efforts, and creating nice back links to your main web site. You may be able to easily pump information into the system with out much effort, but so is everyone else. Once you recognize this fact, then your can set about to create a compelling message so that you can rise above the noise. However, for more serious community interaction, Last.fm, various message boards and mailing lists across the internet are the real community gold. Shame on Jupiter Research for not recognizing this fact.
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