Not very long ago in the music world, if you wanted professional sounding recordings you had to go to a professional studio to get them. And if you wanted to distribute your music to fans- tapes and CDs sold or given out directly at a performance was the only way. Or if you wanted to publicize one of your shows, you’d hand out fliers on the street. Today, however, with the advent of more powerful personal computers, audio recording software and recording devices, it is much easier and much cheaper than ever before to produce quality recordings right out of the home. It is in this state that many aspiring artists and bands across the country find themselves in today. Active, computer literate musicians benefit from a wide range of online resources to help distribute and promote their music on a scale never before imaginable to local and aspiring artists. At the same time it is transforming the music industry, or at least how bands and record executives look at it, in several different ways.
For bands hoping to break into the big time music business, there have always been inherent challenges. Traditionally, bands would have to either sell or give away CDs of their music at shows as their only means of distribution. Now, thanks to the Internet, bands can simply give out their web address or a CD with the web address printed on the CD. No longer do fans have to physically copy demo CDs of these new bands in order to pass on to friends- the music is instantly accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The Internet enhances the power of word-of-mouth music promotion immensely.
The Internet is full of outlets for anyone to output their own content and actually be heard. People post and distribute blogs, pictures, music, and videos online. This online mediascape is self perpetuating and viral in that the consumers are providing the channel of distribution. Producer, distributor, consumer are all blended together- there are no set channels someone has to go through to get a message out. If the content is worth the attention, if it is interesting or entertaining, the producer needs only to post their content online and it will spread organically. All content can be accesses almost immediately with a high-speed Internet connection, thereby erasing all special and time boundaries for anyone’s “published” content. Online social networking sites take advantage of this aspect of the Internet by giving users a space to represent themselves online and put a face to any content each user produces or consumes. Through these sites today’s aspiring bands and musicians can connect to their audiences in ways never before possible; Myspace.com, Facebook.com, and Last.fm are three major social networking sites that make this phenomenon possible.
Myspace.com, founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, is the most popular social networking site on the Internet and according to a November 17, 2006 article from Rolling Stone Magazine, “MySpace has become the fourth-highest-trafficked Web site [in the United States] (after Yahoo!, eBay and MSN), with 35 million members...” Bands can create profiles (or their fans can create profiles for them) that allow individual users to become ‘friends’ with the band. Bands can also become ‘friends’ with other bands. It is interesting that this kind of personal connection can only be found online, however contrived this connection may be, the fact remains that it is a connection- I don’t know anywhere else I can find a generally accepted document that states I am friends with someone. Fans can post messages on the bands message board and feel like they are actually communicating with the band itself. Official web pages for bands can have great content, feel, and tone to them, however a web page is a description… an information source. With a MySpace account fans can feel like they are communicating and interacting directly with the band because their page looks just like theirs- it’s all the same format with the same constraints.
In addition to the personal connection fans get with MySpace, it is just a great way to distribute information. Bands can post songs for either streaming or download, based on whatever privacy settings the band deems appropriate. Up-to-date show information is also easily displayed. A MySpace page serves the same function as a web site, except reduced to a basic form that is not only informational, but also shared and connected with all the people that consider themselves fans of the band. It is a phenomenal tool for any band or musician- big or small. While popular acts use MySpace pages as a tool within a larger promotion strategy provided to them by their record company or other public relations mechanism, aspiring bands largely use MySpace as their sole means of distribution of information and media. The great part is that no matter the size of the band, they pages that look almost exactly the same with essentially the same capabilities. According to a September 2, 2006 Business News article, MySpace will soon allow registered bands to directly sell downloads of their music through their MySpace pages. "A band in Iowa can now reach out to fans in Los Angeles," MySpace President Chris DeWolfe said.
Facebook.com, the second most popular social networking site, does not allow bands to have profiles but it provides a great vehicle for “word of mouth” style online promotion and tagging. Users can tag their favorite bands in their profiles and when one of these tags is clicked, the user can automatically see how many other people like that band as well. Going off of this idea of social tagging, users can create fan groups on the site that both serve as another type of tag, showing that they are in fact a fan of the band, as well as a forum for discussion about the band. In addition to creating groups and giving tagged band endorsements in user profiles Facebook provides a means for users to message each other. Users can send both private messages to other users, and public messages via a users “wall.” If your friend leaves you a wall message that says, “Hey, check out this new band I’ve been listening to…” all of a sudden anyone that looks at your wall from then on is exposed to that message.
Probably the most useful function on Facebook.com for aspiring bands, or hit bands, are the Facebook events. Anyone can create an event- it has a specific time, place, etc. They are basically online fliers, however, because of the interface they exist in they’re not perceived as annoying. Friends invite friends to events- the event invitations are seen as welcoming and unobtrusive. If an aspiring band wants to get out awareness about a show all they have to do is create an event on Facebook and invite their friends. Their friends can then invite their friends- it’s like chain mail that happens naturally. The best part is that each flier comes with a personal recommendation implicitly built into it. If some guy hands you a flier for some bands show, who cares? But if it’s your friend that handed you the flier, then there is value already attached to it, you might actually want to take a look. Facebook events provide a frame of reference that paper handbills for a show can never provide.
Last.fm is a web site that solely focuses on social music tagging. User profiles consist almost entirely of a catalogue of their listening habits. Users have to download a small piece of software that records any song the user listens to on their computers music player, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player, and uploads that information to the site. The web site will then generate music recommendations based on the users listening history. This allows the user to get personalized recommendations on new music and find other people with similar musical taste to themselves. The site uses a Wiki system that allows users to update information about each artist. The main benefit of this site is that as fans of a band simply listen to their music on their computers that they have bought, been given, or downloaded Last.fm records that and other users can see that these people with similar musical interests have been listening to that band. This is the greatest example of the hyper-word-of-mouth promotion effect that social networking sites have. 
With Last.fm users don’t even have to actively do anything to spread the word about a band. Whatever a user listens to is recorded and from there can gain momentum.
Artists can also create accounts and put songs up for users to listen to, again either allowing downloading or only streaming. Like the system MySpace is planning to allow artists to directly sell music through the site, Last.fm provides a link to Amazon.com through which an artist could potentially set up an account to sell their music through. Last.fm also offers promotional tools to help spread the word about registered artists. Users have to pay for these additional services, like banner ads and inserting your uploaded music into selected Last.fm radio streams. These ads and increased online radio plays are highly focused within the Last.fm community and would be excellent marketing tools for bands wanting to gain more exposure and fans than the basic community based service the site provides free.
This outpouring of self-perpetuated online music marketing is having profound effects on the traditional music industry. These social networking sites, however, are not a death sentence for the record companies. After years of playing catch-up, on the heels of file sharing sites and the iPod, record companies are starting to integrate the utility of the Internet into their strategies. Using MySpace to promote artists is probably the best illustration of the trend of “viral marketing,” where a sales message is passed on through existing social networks by consumers. According to a May 2006 article in London newspaper, The Guardian, “… you find the music business letting the media believe what it wants to about the "bottom-up" Internet - and hiding the top-down PR at which record companies have excelled for decades.” Artists like Lilly Allen, who have highly frequented MySpace pages, often gain media attention as being an online phenomenon when in fact that MySpace was used as a tool by her existing record company to promote her music. Using MySpace to break new talent at a record company is a great tool used in conjunction with other promotion and public relations efforts, but the site is not limited to new artists. Well known artists use MySpace and others to stay on top of their game, releasing special content to fans via these web pages. According to the previously cited Rolling Stones article, “Foo Fighters offered a podcast on the making of their latest album, In Your Honor; Weezer and Nine Inch Nails have streamed new music before its release; Coldplay uploaded exclusive footage from their tour of Japan…”
As the Public Relations Manager for Star Course, the University of Illinois student run concert production and promotion organization, I used Facebook.com to publicize an upcoming concert for the band Guster. I sent messages to administrators of Guster fan groups and asked them to mass message all the members of the groups with a short blurb about the concert and ticket purchasing information. Also we created a Facebook event group and staff members are encouraged to invite friends. We have used the Facebook events and groups to promote shows all year long because the messages penetrate the intended audience, the messages can spread virally, and because Facebook users at the University of Illinois are our target market.
So, while online social networking sites are not a sure way to skyrocket a new independent bands success, they do allow bands and aspiring musicians to build and maintain a fan base with incredible ease at basically no cost. I use MySpace and Last.fm to distribute music for my band, The Phonographs. We don’t get to play together very much since the lead guitar player and myself live in Champaign, while our drummer lives in Rock Island, IL. I use MySpace and Last.fm to put up tracks we’ve recorded and share them with my friends. I don’t really do much ‘promoting’ with the sites but without them I’d have no way of letting my friends hear our songs. According fellow MySpace user, Andy Wicklund he uses MySpace because it is, “A free place to post music- a public forum with millions of potential viewers.” Wicklund uses MySpace.com to promote his band, The Detroit Free Press, as well as post recordings of his experimental solo projects. When asked how he would be affected if he or his band couldn’t use MySpace anymore, Wicklund responded, “It would kind of ruin our band because the success of our songs encourages us to get back together whenever we can.” He also uses Facebook to distribute event information when his band has a concert.
This digital literacy that members of my generation grew up with and into allows us to disseminate and consume information on a much further reaching and instantaneous level than any generation previously. One of the best attributes of social networking sites as a vehicle for aspiring musicians to reach their fans is that no hard programming skill is required. All that is required to upload music, send out digital fliers, create profiles, send messages, or update show and contact information is knowledge of how to interact with a web browser. Self-promoting musicians in the early to mid 1990’s during the start of the Internet boom had to know web programming in order to make themselves web pages. As for sending out fliers online, artists could build E-mail lists of fans at shows, but E-mail provides no mechanism for acquiring new fans, at least not on the scale provided by MySpace, Facebook, or Last.fm. It is this skill set of digital and web fluency that empowers today’s up and coming musicians.
The new Internet phenomenon of social networking and tagging is greatly beneficial to aspiring artists. Although it probably won’t land you a record deal, it is a great way to build and maintain a relationship with a growing number of fans. Sites like MySpace.com, Facebook.com, and Last.fm are transforming the ways in which people find out about and listen to new music. “Despite the music industry’s exhaustive efforts, the Internet remains the best place to discover new music,” says Aidin Vaziri of The San Francisco Chronicle. Social networking sites provide a democratic medium in that bands both large and small use the same resources. Small bands communicate with a small amount of fans and large bands communicate with a large number of fans, but the concept is the same. As we move forward into this new digital era, whether you choose to define it that way or not, our ability to create, share, consume, and comment on a vast new array of individually produced media is growing every day. It is important for everyone, both young and old, to take advantage of the potential these sites, and the ones they precede have to offer- not for fear of being left in the dust, but simply for what can be gained by using them. And if you’re going to start a band (something I highly recommend) why not throw up a MySpace page- you might find out that you have more fans than you think.
