I came across this great article called “Booking your band on your Myspace popularity”.
It suggests that bands (especially the smaller and unestablished ones) stop caring about the web 2.0 revolution, take a step back, and concentrate on the grass-roots approach to music, which is to play gigs, distribute fliers, attend other concerts, network and hand out CD’s to acquire “real” fans.
This sounds about right: the number of plays or downloads of your song on Myspace doesn’t equate to tickets and merchandise sold. Gigging is the only way to grow your local fan-base, and promoters adopt a 35/100 rule when it comes to your fans: if you say you can draw 100, you can draw 35 max.
I think that Myspace and other social music platforms become useful when bands use them to support the activities that make up a musician’s work in “real-life”: organizing street teams, promoting shows, collaborating with other musicians and booking gigs. It’s not how many fans you have, it’s the quality of the fans, as well as the ability to get them involved in your activities as a band, that will provide the value to these social networking sites.
Would love to know what you think.
