MySpace

I've been convinced of this for a long time, and I'm definitely not the first person to say it, but the MySpace community is not going to buy your album. The social networking site is a decent place to spread the word about your band, maybe gain a few new fans, and the band profiles have definitely become a familiar status quo to booking agents, club owners, record labels, and the general music loving public. When I want to hear a song by a band, I usually find myself going to MySpace before the band's own website. How fucked up is that? But at least I know the band is only going to put forth a select six songs. A nice little sampler before I move onto their site.

But back to sales. Do people wasting their time surfing MySpace actually decide to buy music? If you send a personal message to all of your friends telling them about your new album, how many do you think will buy it? My estimation is about 1%. One person for every hundred you write will buy it. And that's if your friends list consists of people that might actually care about your music, not other bands padding their friend count or those sexy vixens that update their status every 40 seconds so they show up in your friend updates.

MySpace is an easy method of stalling. When you don't know what else to do for your album, you start adding friends or leaving comments. But sit back and take stock of what you're getting back, and you might find that it's better to invest your time doing something else. Like blogging...