You’ve probably heard the story about the Canadian band, Mobile, who got their myspace url, taken back by myspace with only 48 hours notice.
Yep, myspace is launching some mobile service and wants the domain. Tough luck for the band who spent 2 years authentically making connections with their fans.
There has been outrage from the artist community. My take is that myspace can do whatever they want. Sure, it’s a douchy maneuver, but they have the right to do it.
What the band could have done is bought a domain name for $7/year and have it redirect the fans to the myspace site. If they have to get another myspace url, they just redirect their domain to the new myspace url. The fans would not care or notice, as they would just be going to the same domain they did before.
Their manager was also probably smart enough to realize the publicity potential of this and got the story out. Since hitting the news, the story has been picked up by a bunch of media.
If you check out http://www.myspace.com/mobile, you’ll see they still have the domain. Maybe they worked out a deal to keep the url and get the press.
Good for them.
On a side note, it’s hard finding info and pictures on the band, because you have to weed through all the cell phone sites and pics. Picking your band name is another blog all on its own.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZr7Gxb1qpQ]
Hoover
3 Comments
Hey Andrew,
I totally respect your perspective.
I can totally get why a fan may want to experience something more on an “official” self-hosted site. You gotta offer that much more to make it worth it though.
However, if you get exactly what’s available on a myspace artist page, what good is an “official” site? I can find everything I need to know about an artist without having to be a member of myspace. An artist still has freedom to modify the design too. They can put an email form to collect email addresses. They can do all they need to, while still owning the domain as insurance.
If you look at mobile’s official site, it offers hardly anything more than their myspace. Their music link goes out to last fm, their video link goes to their youtube channel, etc…
For an up and coming band, where cash is limited as is, owning the domain is much more important than having an “official” self-hosted site. When an artist actually has a real, solid, growing fan-base, then it may be worth investing in an “official” site that offers so much more to those fans.
All that being said, an artist catering to an older audience may want to go the way of the self-hosted “official” site.
I know people are going to disagree with me, but that’s cool. Thanks for giving me shit for it. I still think I have a solid point, coming from practical point of view.
Cheers,
Hoover
I agree completely with Will above. Bands need to do the exact opposite of what you advise.
All of these music discovery platforms and social networks need to direct people back to a central repository (the band’s URL) where the band can interact with fans, distribute videos/songs/news, etc.
There’s nothing more disheartening than being lead to believe that a band has taken the time and energy (representing that they care enough about what they do) to create their own website, only to be redirected to a myspace page.
I feel bad for them. But every band must have their own domain name and build their own community thru an email list. You can install a simple wordpress website in minutes for only a few bucks a month for hosting. Don’t rely on myspace, garageband, facebook, flickr as your main band site! These sites should bring fans to your main site where you get them to sign up to your fan club via email.