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

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.