Who here has heard of Myspace.com? Not many, I'd wager, unless my readership has suddenly become comprised of teenagers.
Do you remember when LiveJournal was considered the blogging tool of little or no consequence, mainly because it was stuffed to the gills with teenagers spouting pointless nonsense about nothing in particular (unlike 'proper' bloggers or course)? What nobody bothered to notice was that LJ is a shockingly keen piece of kit that, while it looked a little rough, worked really well at what it was designed to do. Nobody disses LJ like they used to and most bloggers have an LJ on the side, even if they don't tell their 'normal' blog readers about it (and no, I'm not saying).
Myspace looks to be LJ on a shit-load of steroids and speed. It first came on my radar via my referrer logs where someone had hotlinked to an amusing image on my server which I normally don't mind but it was being access a lot. Following the link took me to a page somewhat like this, which was all rather scary to say the least.
So far, so easy to dismiss, but what's interesting about Myspace is that it's huge yet no-one who claims to have their finger on the pulse of what's going on is saying anything about it. Probably because it looks really shit and is full of moronic teenagers. That said, musicians are taking note. Myspace appears to gear itself around music as a social networking tool, which partly explains how it's grown so fast with teenagers, and offers bands their own 'myspace' to promote themselves. And by all accounts it really works for them.
If this Myspace thingy really is the future then I reckon I need to be part of it. I'm not going to miss the boat due to snobbishness like I did with LJ. I'm going to get right in there and hang with the kids. Here is my Myspace space, set up this evening. I already have one friend, Tom, who was assigned to me by Myspace in a kind of buddying system so I don't feel left out at the party, which is nice of them. Since 21,199,314 people are friends with Tom it means my "extended network" is huge so I may well have to ditch him soon, but right now it's good to have a friend, no matter how insincere.
For I'm about to embark on an experiment. I'm going to take Myspace seriously and see what happens, and I shall report my findings here.
Wish me luck...
A few hours in and already I have a friend without even trying. And it's a real person this time. The only thing is Melissa came across me via this blog rather than from within Myspace itself, but I friended her anyway because she seems nice.
Spent a few minutes today filling out my profile. I hate doing these as a rule. In fact I generally hate social networks as a rule. Not sure exactly why but it's probably some kind of British reserve or just shyness, plus the blunt declaration of interests never seems to reflect the real inner 'me' in all it's complexity. Or somesuch bullshit. But if I'm going to do this experiment properly then I'm going to have to throw myself into this 100%.
A big dilemma came with the big networking options. I have to select from Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends and Networking. Since I would instinctively select none of those I selected them all and for good measure added the sort of personal details I would not normally push out there. And I tried to be as honest as possible given the options available. My lose plan is not to be a social networking whore, throwing myself into the faces of everyone I come across, but to open myself up to all comers and see who bothers with me. And the honesty is really just laziness - I can never be arsed to construct a pseudonym.
The Myspace interface is fucking awful, it has to be said. I wonder how much of this is deliberate, in the same way that eBay is deliberately amateur looking so it's not threatening to non-techy folk. If Flickr is a game then Myspace is a really annoying game full of inconsistencies and no decent help system and a very kludgy UI. Their support system for adding features seems to be to befriend someone who has those features and ask them how they did it, which is kinda cool I suppose.
I also did a bit of digging around the music stuff and so far it impresses. Clicking through one of my interests links (Murakami) I came across Helicoper Helicopter who seem to be a pretty functional indie band. An integrated music player immediately kicks off one of their songs (which is potentially annoying if you're not expecting it) and you can download mp3s which is pretty neat. I friended them but have to wait for them approve said friending before it shows up on my profile.
An interesting aspect, which is probably not that strange but I've never played with it before, is browsing for people who are geographically close to you. Looking for women interesting in dating around my age who live within five miles brings up a surprising number but it feels a little too creepy to actually contact any of them. In fact that's going to be my biggest step - actually contacting someone via this service based on their declared interests. I'm not even sure if I want to.
Well, the great Myspace experiment is over. I really can't be bothered with the thing. To be honest, the main problem is the interface. It doesn't just suck, it really fucking sucks big hairy balls. Maybe I've been spoiled by web services that take their user interface seriously but there's no way I can be arsed to get involved with the Myspace world. My profile as been stripped down and I'm outa there.
So why's it so astoundingly popular? To be honest, I don't really know. There's no doubt an element of critical mass, where once enough of your friends are involved you have to get involved yourself no matter how much hard work it is, but I do wonder if it's just that people don't know any better. That's not to say they're stupid. They just think services like Myspace are the normal way to do things on the web. I'm reminded of the gasps of amazement of people when I show them Google Maps and edit the details of my photos in Flickr directly on the page, or when I demonstrate to them how to open pages in tabs in Firefox or how this RSS feeds thingy actually works. Okay, maybe gasps is pushing it a bit, but remember most people out there are using Internet Explorer to access their Hotmail accounts. For them stuff like Myspace is perfectly fine and dandy because it gets the job done.
But for me, nah. No offence but I have better things to do.
And one of them is to finally get involved with Wikipedia! You'll hopefully have noticed I tend to link to this wonder of our internet age a fair bit, usually when I want to have something explained or defined. In brief, it's a web-based encyclopedia which anyone, and I mean anyone, can edit. If this sounds like a terrible idea that's bound to go wrong, all revisions are stored so that if someone does something stupid it can be rolled back. Amazingly it works really really well with Wikipedians carefully crafting entries and adding to or editing what others have created. The best way to really understand how Wikipedia works is to watch Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie.
I'd been putting off getting involved because it seemed like quite a big deal to write stuff there. I rely on Wikipedia (with caution of course) for a lot of things so the idea that my ill-founded knowledge might be relied on by others seemed a bit of a dangerous thing. Plus once you start writing something you really have to be certain about your facts. That requires research and citation, which seems like a lot of hard work.
However, while surfing around some British comics pages for a BugPowder post on Wikipedia I noticed that my BugPowder posting colleague Steve Block had a profile there and had been active for a few months. Now I didn't think "Hell, if Steve can do this then it can't be that hard", perish the thought - it was more that I'd never knowingly known anyone involved in Wikipedia before, and now here was a buddy.
So with some trepidation, and after reading all the guidelines and help pages, I started putting together my first page. I think it's probably quite typical of people's first forays in that it's just a big list of Comics Journal Interviews. I have a pretty large, but by no means complete, collection of The Comics Journal and its interviews are always essential reading. However, there doesn't really exist a decent index for it anywhere. Now I have one, not just for myself but for anyone else to use and, hopefully, add to. A useful resource, certainly, and the interview subjects are all linked to their respective Wiki pages, but not it's really "encyclopedic" is it.
Looking through the pages Steve had created I noticed he'd started one for Escape Magazine, one of the more important comics anthologies from the 1980s of which I know a fair bit and have most of the issues. Here's what it looked like before I got to it and here's what it looked like when I'd added to it. (It'll no doubt change in the future so here's what it looks like right this second).
I know about this stuff. I've spent the last 15 years involved with it in various degrees and have a wealth of resources to back me up (those Comics Journals for a start). Ever since Caption where I chaired a panel on the history of the UK small press, I've been wanting to get this stuff down. It's not only interesting, it's actually quite important. Or I think it's important and I know a lot of other people think so too. And now here's somewhere to do it.
What's interesting is that having created a page that has some weight to it (and I haven't finished it yet, there's a lot more to come) I've given weight to the subjects that spin off it. For example, there's now a need for pages for all the artists that were connected with Escape to exist because they have a context. Steve started me off by writing "stubs" for articles he thought should be there and in turn I'll start other people off. It's all quite wonderful really.
And, above all, Wikipedia is a standards-compliant site with a superb user interface that encourages you to interact with it. It even has a vibrant community. Myspace? What's that then?
Popped down to the Flapper last night to take some photos of An Untitled Musical Project (GDFAF report) with their blessing in return for free entry and a pint of beer, my going rate at the moment. Didn't stay for the whole gig but I did have a nice chat with drummer James and inevitably we got talking about MySpace which was apparently responsible for everything they've achieved of late, from gigs to getting a manager. What was interesting was it required no effort from them on the networking front. They just uploaded the songs, filled in the info and kept the gig listings updated - everything else just happened. Which sounds a little too good to be true for a band that's only been around for 9 months or so but the proof is there.
Despite a tiny crowd they were still tight and highly enjoyable, which was nice as I couldn't remember exactly what it was I'd heard before with all 14 gigs merging in my mind, so go check them out when they're next playing. And they only live around the corner from me which means I can deliver the photos bike-courier style. Magic.
The campaign to turn our good friend Steve into a global star begins.
Pretty skeletal at the moment but there are a couple of new songs you won't have heard before and they're all available to download. It's all very exciting!
(Birmingham bands are in bold)
GDFAF #1
Man In Fridge - Overplay
GDFAF #2
The Tates
The Bleak - Overplay - MySpace
GDFAF #3
Distophia - MySpace
Polysics - MySpace
GDFAF #4
A Day Called Desire - Purevolume - MySpace
The Klopeks - MySpace
Voodoo Glow Skulls - MySpace
GDFAF #5
Dead Combo
The Warlocks - MySpace
GDFAF #6
Modified Toy Orchestra
GDFAF #7
Listen To Johnny - MySpace
Killin Zoe - MySpace
GDFAF #8
Schwervon - MySpace
Jeffrey Lewis - MySpace
GDFAF #9
Dave Kusworth
GDFAF #11
Breezer
Acoustic Ladyland
GDFAF #12
Paisley Riot - MySpace
The Rumble Strips - MySpace
The Young Knives - MySpace
GDFAF #13
An Untitled Musical Project - MySpace
Astilla - MySpace
GDFAF #14
StrangeTime - Purevolume
The International Karate Plus - Karma Download - MySpace
I Am Zeitgeist - MySpace
Other Birmingham bands I've stumbled across:
Against the Wheel - MySpace.
Sabotage Left - MySpace.
Fidget - MySpace.
Una Corda - MySpace.
Steve Ball - MySpace.
Any more? Leave links in the comments.
One of the appeals of digital photography was not having stacks of useless prints that cost lots of money cluttering up the place so what with most of my stuff being digital for the last few years I haven't bothered getting prints made until quite recently. I'd been recommended a place in town as being fairly cheap and they certainly were at £5.00 for fifty but fell foul of their desire to lighten and crop as they saw fit which was terribly annoying as I'd already prepared my photos to the correct dimensions and had no idea what degree of lightening they'd used. Sure, if you just want your basic snapshots developed then the Kodak place opposite Moor St Station in Birmingham is fine but for anything vaguely advanced my advice is to steer well clear.
I've tried a few online services but the best by far is Photobox, as recommended by a professional studio photographer friend. Their 6p a print offer is slightly misleading as you have to buy 1200 credits to get that price but £24 for 300 works out at 8p which is cheaper than the high street even with postage. And most importantly the quality is very good indeed with a rapid turnaround (my photos were dispatched within hours of my placing the order). I will be using them often.
I've been mainly getting my gig photos developed so I can put together a small portfolio to take with me when I'm photographing bands. Related to this is my using my MySpace page again purely to push the photos to musicians who might be interested. While MySpace is still an appallingly badly constructed service it does appear to work very well at this concentrated level and I'm even making use of the blog (rss) on there, though only for the gig photos. The main draw is that this is where the local bands tend to be so since I want to track and contact local bands I kinda need to be there. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.
I'm getting "friended" by a fair number of Birmingham-based bands on MySpace at the moment which is super-keen though I'm having trouble keeping track of them all in my head, so here's a brief summary.
Morning View - Acoustic four piece. Playing a gig at the Actress and Bishop on Sunday Feb 5th and have asked me to take some photos of them.
The Arm - starts out sounding like standard post-rock noodling metal but then a vocorder-thingy comes into play and I grin.
Captain Dangerous - This all sounds very familiar and I'll kick myself when I put my finger on it, possibly tapping the same vein as The Rumble Strips, and it's all good stuff. They seem to be touring around the country a fair bit and the next Brum gig isn't until April.
The Graham Parsnip Liquidiser Torture Think-Tank Project - I'm still not sure how much my mileage is varying with this bunch who are playing on that tightrope of comedy rock. I think I'll need to see them live to be sure. On Feb 4th in fact.
The Magnetic Four have a nice chugga chugga to their indie rock thing and appear to play in Brum every month or so.
The Motive made me sit up and take notice with a blatant Stooges homage but they build upon that nicely and I'm still taking notice.
Devil and Casey Jones describe themselves as "That fight that happened between Neil Finn and Big Black. You know, the one refereed by Frank Black" and for that I'm prepared to like them a lot. As a bonus I also like their music and should be going to see them at the Flapper on Saturday.
Betty and The Id are just downright intriguing. The music is of the dreamy 60's psychedelic variety but I suspect their live show could be something special. They possibly slip into the Misty's spectrum of the local scene and that's a good thing.
And that's all in the last fortnight. Blimey.
Another gathering of West Midlands musical activity noticed on MySpace. As always with this stuff taste is relative and your mileage will vary.
Sabotage Left I nearly saw once and maybe I'll actually see them one day. Nice fast poundy guitar shouty punky stuff going on there.
Long Day Gone do melodic guitar based rock that all sounds very familiar in a road house kinda way.
Pagan are a female fronted (and I wish that wasn't notable but it is, damn it) rock band with edges of metal. I keep thinking they should be heavier but that's probably just the pentagram.
The Culprit are from Stratford but that's close enough and do that harmonising metal thing.
Tobias again do the harmonising metal thing. I think the kids call it Emo, but what do I know.
Photo buck the trend slightly by coming from a more pop-punk angle and I think I can detect interesting things going on there.
The True Believers are kinda odd, with vocals sounding like 80s crooner-pop and a whole gamut of musical styles from electronica to country.
Morning View are of the acoustic songwritery vibe and need some photos taken, something I'll hopefully be able to help with.
H.O.S.T.I.L.E. describe themselves as "Progressive / Death Metal" and have a song called "Urine Love". Like a lot of this kind of thing it doesn't do much for me through the headphones but I'm sure it's enormous fun live.
I might be in an overly critical mood (music can be susceptible to that kind of thing) but not much really leapt out and grabbed me from that bunch. Of course this is all based on their music streaming from MySpace - live performances are bound to be different - so don't read too much into that. What's really becoming apparent is there's a shitload of yer basic rock and metal out there and while I support that it's not really my thing. Where are the Misty's, the Noise Noise Allores, the Magnetophones? Give me some quirk!
Also noted: Miss Lisa is putting on gigs of the post-rock / intelli-metal (I made that one up) variety. Zoot, who put on gigs at the Flapper, have a MySpace presence, as does Arthur of the Catapult Club who does gigs at the Jug and Bar Academy. And here's Capsule for all your Custard Factory needs.
Links to other Brum bands in the comments please, or just friend me.
Third in an ongoing harvest of Birmingham-ish based musicians found on MySpace. If you want to be on this list then friend me.
The Big Bang do a stomping, throbbing rock thing with echos of 80s Matchbox. Apparently they're really good live.
Deluka are very interesting. Couldn't put my finger on them until the words "New York Punk" filtered through my brain, but even that's not quite right. Hmmmm... (ta)
The Nameless In House Jam Band. They jam. No two performances ever the same. Have the audacity to put a really long jam session on their MySpace page. Respect is due.
Destroy Cowboy - interesting shoegazer-type stuff with an experimental edge. Need to see live to be sure.
Thee Moths - this seems to be close to the Avrocar / Magnetophone style but with a hefty lump of guitar/folk thrown in. Very slow and atmospheric and quite beautiful. Hmm...
Chrissy Van Dyke - powerful female singer-songerwriter stuff at an intriguingly high standards. One to check out methinks.
Robin - more of the singer-songwriter stuff. Not quite sure about this one - some good moments...
Perception - grinding dirty grunge rock stuff.
As you may know, I surf the web on a Mac with Firefox AdBlocked up the eyeballs. No popups ever pop (and if they do they go into a new tab) and banner-ad-choked pages are a delicious sea of white. It's always quite a shock when I use someone else's browser to discover that the web is full of ads and popups, not to mention the threat of viruses and trojans.
That said, occasionally one gets through, and today I had a doozy. I loaded up a MySpace profile and clicked on the View Pics link. Suddenly my browser was shrunk to a teeny box in the corner and a Javascript box emerged from the top bar (which on a PC would look more like an alert box) informing me that I needed to run a critical thingy or something. Having other tabs open I didn't fancy losing everything in that window so I clicked Cancel, the window came back and a large animated GIF pretended to do a system analysis reporting 53 critical errors in my registry, or some shit. I closed the tab and another one opened recommending I download some application called Win-thingy as a matter of urgency. I closed the window and it all seemed to be over, though I wonder if I'll find some pointless Windows files scattered around my hard drive next time I do a clean-up.
For a few seconds I was in the Hinterweb and it was rather telling. This is how most people live their online lives, walking down Crack Alley with a "mug me" sign stuck on their backs. But most worrying of all was that this piece of paranoia came from clicking on a link in MySpace, currently owned by Murdoch's News International who are on record as wanting to maximise their advertising dollar from the operation (as well they should given what they paid for it). This wasn't a pop-up or a banner ad. This was a big fat lie that at best you could call social engineering.
I don't hold the Murdoch empire in much regard, it must be said, but if this sort of thing, especially if it's authorized, is beyond all that. It's the behaviour of scumbags and hucksters not one of the largest media companies in the world. Sort it out, MySpace.
It used to be that the Guardian's Technology section (previously known as Online) understood the internet while the Media section, by framing it within the bounds of existing paradigms, patently didn't. A recent article in the former, Making a song and dance, shows the emergence of a new mutant strain of article in that it kinda gets it but ultimately fails miserably.
The basic premise is that when you look in detail at all the bands and artists that have "made it big" on the back of "the MySpace revolution" it's really all about old fashioned major record label activity and thus is nothing new. Therefore the online revolution in music discovery and promotion is the same old system in new clothes.
Which is correct. If you only look at the artists that have signed deals with the major labels. The rise of the Arctic Monkeys, regardless of their musical abilities, is not at all interesting as it all boils down to word of mouth which has fueled the discovery of new non-manufactured acts since pop music began. Their management seized on this buzz and got them signed and the record company exploited it, which is great for them and those that like their music, but it's got nothing to do with "the MySpace revolution".
So, at the risk of banging my head against a brick wall, this is my final say on what MySpace and other online music-related social networking services are all about.
- It's not about MySpace specifically
- One day MySpace will be replaced by something better, probably when the next generation of teens emerge onto the online realm. To understand its success you have to understand the appalling state of band websites. Invariably built in Flash they were impossible to navigate, obfuscated all the important information, were never updated and often made you register before you could hear any music. By contrast a MySpace music page has everything you need on one page - band members, influences, biography, tour dates and, most importantly, the actual music. You could cover it in shit and it would still be an improvement, but that doesn't mean it's the ultimate way of doing this sort of thing, just the first time the information has been vaguely standardised in a manageable format.
- It's all about the Long Tail
- So Madonna has a MySpace page. This isn't interesting. What's important is every band you see at every venue in the country also has one and they all exists on a level playing field.
- Success is relative
- Not every band or artist wants to be famous. At this stage in the game most people are aware of The Problem With Music and while some don't know or don't care there are many who are quite happy with a small but significant number of fans who will buy their albums and fill out their gigs. Previously this middle ground was hard to get established in but MySpace has provided a backbone making it all a lot easier to DIY.
- It's how the bands use it
- Social networks like MySpace are, by their nature, about social networking. I'm kinda surprised I need to say that but within the old paradigm of broadcast it seems to get forgotten. What's interesting about MySpace is not what you see when you visit someone's page but what's going on behind the scenes. People are talking to each other, sharing information and getting connected. Bands are finding gigs, managers, labels and other like-minded artists through MySpace in a manner that dwarfs he previous methods of doing such things.
- There's a halo effect
- Tying in to this are all the other actors on the music scene - the promoters, small labels, badge makers, photographers, bloggers / zinesters, etc. The barriers to setting up your own operation have been lowered significantly by hooking into the relevant MySpace communities as all the contacts and information you need is there - it's just a matter of doing something with it. The end result is an ecosystem which, while it may not replace the major labels, provides a viable alternative.
- The death of bullshit
- There are a lot of wankers in the music scene and their currency is cool. When everything you could possibly know came from the NME and Melody Maker it was easy to get away with pretending you knew the cool. Now, with an infinite number of MySpace music pages out there, it's impossible. You've never heard of the bands I like, but I've never heard of the bands you like either - shall we share links while we laugh at the hipsters?
- Nobody cares what you think
- So what happens when you've got a large number of overlapping communities of artists forming a vibrant and self-sufficient means to produce and disseminate their works? The traditional means of getting music to fans becomes less and less important. In the past a band might have said "fuck the labels, fuck the journalists" and been left with nothing. Now bands and their fans don't even notice them. Music journos and A&R men used to hold the keys to the Rock Castle but no-one wants to get in anymore. I don't care what you think of my favourite band. Who are you anyway?
Most importantly a band on MySpace is not a "MySpace band". This should be obvious, but then so should this whole post.
Yes, MySpace sucks big hairy balls. Yes, it's full of the rather annoying variety of teenager. But when it comes to music it's possibly the only place to go, not because it's a great service (it patently isn't in so many ways) but because of what it allows musicians and those who like music to do. Understand this and you understand why "the MySpace revolution" is important, and remember, this is only the first faltering steps. Just wait to something decent comes along.
This excerpt from the MySpace Terms and Conditions has been floating about the place, grabbed in this instance from the Resonance FM blog where they say "once an artist posts up any content (including songs), it then belongs to My Space (AKA Rupert Murdoch) and they can do what they want with it throughout the world without payng the artist."
By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies.
I've got no desire to be an apologist for Murdoch and wish with all my heart that a better service than MySpace had won the music-social-network game, but I'd really like some clarification on this, specifically the bit I've emphasized above.
Doesn't "on and through the Services" just allow MySpace to turn your uploaded mp3 into a Flash Audio file (modify, adapt, translate) and make it available (publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute) throughout MySpace? Isn't this just the standard disclaimer for such things? Yahoo, which includes Flickr, has the same thing in their T&Cs (about halfway down). Does that mean they "own" my photos, regardless of what copyright or license I'm attached to them?
Of course not. I own my photos, but by utilising Flickr's service I grant them licence to edit and reproduce my images within the service on search pages, aggregated pages and so on. This is what makes Flickr work. It's also what makes MySpace work. That any random MySpace user is able to embed a song in their profile without asking permission first is enabled by this piece of clunky legal speak which I'm sure you'd find on any service that allows people to upload their own copyrighted work.
That last bit, "a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies" looks more disturbing, but probably isn't. I assume this means the nature of their backup system is such that when you delete a song it will be some time before it's completely eradicated from their system, if at all, and so should MySpace continue to stream that song (say on a user's page that's running from a backup) after you've removed it then they're still covered.
Again, I'd really like for MySpace to screw up in this way and for everyone to boycott them allowing something better to take it's place, but I have serious doubts as to whether this is the thing.
These things, while they should be studied deeply, are generally written from the point of view of "how can we not get sued" rather than "how can be screw our customers." Murdoch doesn't want your songs - he wants to sell advertising on top of your songs.
But hey, I'm not a lawyer. Can someone get a lawyer to look at this before everyone goes off half-cocked?
If you're on a MySpace page that you really want to read but just can't stand to look (maybe you can't even read it) because the person has covered it in flashing gifs and bad coloured text and shit, here's a handy tip.
You're using Firefox, right?
Install EditCSS. It's a handy thing if you ever need to, well, edit CSS but if not don't worry, it'll just sit there nice and quiet like.
Go to the MySpace page in question.
Open up the EditCSS sidebar.
Select All.
Delete.
Peace shall reign throughout the kingdom.
(Unless they've got three emedded movies running at once - you'll need AdBlock for that.)
