In a cost-saving move, MySpace will no longer allow songs to play automatically by going to a band's MySpace page. According to DigitalMusicNews, this will save MySpace tens of millions of dollars from saving bandwidth and royalty costs. Remember, everytime you stream a signed band's music on MySpace, MySpace has to pay that label for your free stream.
This move will also affect band's MySpace plays. It will allow band's (and industry) to get a real sense of who is listening to your music. The user has to start the music player to hear the band's music. The automatic plays no longer count (or exist).
This change is a cost-saving measure since MySpace lost $230 million last quarter for Fox Interactive Media, according to the Huffington Post. MySpace laid off 700 workers this year and broke its lease on office space it no longer needed.
Bands, I again direct you to my article Bands, You Need A Plan B And Fast which addresses the fall of MySpace which is home to thousands of bands "homepage." What is your Plan B?
15 comments:
As someone recently told me, we are in the Wild Wild West of music and music business. It is a fun but uncertain time for everyone.
Good move, surprised they didn't do this sooner.
On a related note... we will be opening up The StagBloc System for bands in the next month to create and maintain their own websites and integrate all of their internet profiles from a central location. At the moment we're planning on giving a limited number of bands 6 months for free. Timmy, we should touch base soon so I can show you all the new updates!
Didn't this happen a while ago? I noticed about a month or two ago I had to start clicking play all the time...
I personally recommend http://www.purevolume.com
As someone in a band who uses Myspace, this honestly doesn't bother me. Hopefully it will help get bands to stop being dependent on their plays to get attention. Plays are so easy to fake now that its no wonder people and labels dont take them seriously anymore.
I dont think Myspace is going the way of Friendster, but its basically a bands press kit now, nothing more. Its one of MANY things you need to have to succeed. Facebook isnt very band friendly but it is much easier to find people you know on. Twitter is extremely useful. The secret is having as much content on as many sites as possible.
I don't see this as much of an issue, bands can(and do) easily manipulate plays on a daily basis. I don't see plays as particularly accurate or worthwhile way of evaluating a band, I'm much more interested in comments/meaningful interaction with fans. I think the larger problem with Myspace and many other social networks is the lack of an accurate and widely available analytical tool. If bands could see exactly where they were getting traffic from they could more effectively market and advertise their music. I also don't think Myspace should be bands main focus, Myspace, along with several other social networks are important tools in a bands toolbox, but shouldn't be their be-all and end-all
We use reverbnation and put our widget on our profile for fans.
doesn't the song play automatically on personal profiles on which the "fan" adds the song to their profile?
haha so funny story. I think some of the more refined playbots now have an update to cope with this change. Some band from my local whom I know for a fact use bots have started having the 10,000 plays a day after dropping to about 30-40 a day once this change first occured. so sadly, I think there will still be issues correlating play counts to sales of albums/tickets. But of course to myspace's point, this is mostly something used by unsigned acts, so it should still save myspace a bit of cash
it won't make a huge difference at all.
Do you have so little news that you had to eliminate your site and can't update your blog even weekly? Quit. Please quit.
So, where have you been Tim? No updates?
BTW, I'm not the same "Anonymous" as above me. I haven't seen any tweets or anything from you. What have you been up to? Everything ok?
Are there any lesser known sites that you would recommend a band utilizing for promotion? Other than twitter and facebook?
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