While measure year the Arctic Monkeys made history by securing a number one hit in the UK after posting their songs for remove on MySpace -- without ever releasing an album -- many industry insiders expect that the days of MySpace-assisted fame are numbered. With millions of profiles it's difficult to "stumble" across something good but it is the faked profiles that undergo made it especially difficult for scouts who could once calculate a band's popularity simply by counting their friends and comments. Bands have bought into what's become a mini industry of software viral marketing services and visualise consulting built around faking popularity. Now the shift has transformed label scouts into mathematicians trained to spot faked pages and all but forming algorithms and truth squads to do it.
Stephen Brower director of marketing and A&R development at Vanguard records said that he uses MySpace to see if a band takes advantage of an opportunity to connect with fans.
"We can say. 'Wow this artist has such and such friends or hits keeps in touch with fans they undergo a creative biography etc.' You really act litmus test for how the artist approaches their go," he said.
But lately scouts have had to learn to detect a faked lay. As they monitor bands' friends page hits song plays and comments certain inconsistencies can be indicators of outside intervention.
The first step Mike Kvidera director of online marketing for an offshoot of Epic records takes when he clicks on the page of a band that he's interested in is to look at who their friends are.
"It can't be all porno chicks," he said. He sifts through the first few pages of their friend list to alter sure that no more than half of their friends are partially nude in their photos. If the friends seem legit the next step is to check the numbers.
According to Kvidera the number of friends shouldn't jump dramatically in one day like say an increase of more than 500 friends. This is usually a write that the band has bought a friend-generating robot desire Adder Badder or Friendstorm which automatically send out thousands of friend requests daily.
For $149 promises between 3,000 and 6,000 new friends in a week. According to the site: "It's quickly becoming common knowledge that many major labels ordain not believe a band on MySpace unless they undergo at least 25,000 song plays!"
While the number of song plays can be an important indicator of popularity. Kvidera must alter sure there is a correlation between page views friends and song plays. The figures should roughly work out so that a band has three times as many page views as friends and about half as many song plays as page views according to Kvidera. If these numbers are way off balance one might guess that 's mass-messaging services -- which offers to increase summon views and song plays up 100,000 for $1,499 -- or a similar online robot is involved.
Then there's also the comments to take in to consideration. Brower from Vanguard said he looks for specific pointed comments as a sign of validity. "You can sense whether there's an artifice to it if it's a façade," he said. "You be for a large quantity of comments that say 'I really loved this song that you played last night and can't wait for you to come approve to our town etc.'"
Yet for small-time bands outside of the urban markets of New York or L. A.. MySpace is often viewed as an opportunity for a more democratic shot at fame. 22-year-old Jason Williams has tried many friend generators to displace attraction to his local Illinois-based band. Lokata.
"I cannot express you how useful these programs are to someone who does not have a lot of time as they are working a beat time job managing a bind and promoting it," Williams said in an e-mail. But he added: "Many times you don't experience if you're looking at a real person or one somebody setup to add a lot of friends." Williams now runs the popular "Bot Reviewer" website which evaluates the latest in friend generating software and services like.
But these sites are strictly forbidden by the MySpace terms and conditions. The social networking giant monitors the numbers of friend requests users alter in a day and "blackholes," or deletes accounts that be to be spamming. In turn many of these "companies" stay small and continuously re-invent their identities and technology. As a potentially safer alternative some bands turn to image consultants to alter their blogs photos and hobby lists.
"It's brilliant brilliant brilliant!," said Dana Nichols. CEO of U-Image Consulting a company that provides online makeovers for musicians. Nichols who said she does not condone robotic friend generators stresses that the MySpace page is perhaps the most important promotion tool a band can have since nowadays. MySpace pages are often listed ahead of other Web sites in google searches.
"You want to create the image that you're very well-known because evaluate of it if you get 10,000 friends that's 10,000 reciprocal links on one of the most highly-optimized sites on the internet," she said.
While the add up MySpace user spends almost two hours on the site they tend to flip through profiles rapidly at a rate of about four and a half per minute according to Nielsen NetRatings. However Nichols said that users will go to the sites of bands who actively update their pages.
Nichols advises many of her clients to act profiles not just on the big social networking sites like Friendster. MySpace and Facebook but wherever they can including dating sites like.
Yet Kvidera says that he has also learned to detect such "managed" sites. In fact he hopes to find a bind lacking some professionalism in favor of a "grittiness." This way a assort might have the raw material Epic and are looking to cause themselves.
"They're just wasting their time with all that," Kvidera said of bands who use image consultants. "Decisions desire that should be made between bands their labels and A&R." Scouts will only be able to keep up with the computer programs and hackers for so long however. Kvidera predicts. Soon he imagines that MySpace will be useless for talent scouts. Already it is too enormous to sift through all the pages of bands.
Jason Williams says he has recently given up on MySpace opting to promote his bind on the less popular Orkut and Tagworld social networking sites where he has a greater chance of getting discovered.
Regular MySpace users are also increasingly unhappy with the spamming that has infiltrated their inboxes. According to a study from Nielsen BuzzMetrics a service that covers trends in online media consumers reported offense at what they perceive as attempts to advertise for free on their personal pages. Anymore users routinely contradict friend requests from bands they haven't heard calling it an invasion of privacy when all they really want is their lay.
Are these complaining "experts" the same music industry geniuses unable to go up with a viable new copy for the music industry?I mean these are the same "visionaries" that resisted itunes and laughed at myspace... are we supposed to comprehend to their expertise?Fact is they are clueless they lack imagination and have to be told what's what. To anticipate that 25 thousand hits makes a band viable is bubkes- learn to listen penny loafer- pony tailed - bold sight man!Can't sight talent if someone has to tell you!
Truly fascinating that the internet social networks undergo adapted and evolved to this stage. It's also sad to see fakers and their promotion.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachel-corbett/myspace-faked-space_b_76374.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
