Well it looks like MY SPACE is in REAL TROUBLE and the decisions they have made in their recent efforts to try and SAVE the company have FAILED MISERABLY! And Facebook has failed to really grasp what really happens at the GRASSROOTS of the music business which is what they are supposed to be about - helping out up and coming band!
Music Fan Pages – were at one time was THE exclusive purview of My Space (and they are STILL vying for bands and artist at MY SPACE more so than anything else - but they have just suffered a huge BRAIN DRAIN and lost 50% of their Employees so we'll see how much longer they can last) so FaceBook Fan Pages are going to FILL that GAP in services and hence gain more market share – but even FaceBook is getting IT WRONG!
I’m certainly no expert on how to code such huge endeavors such as My Space or FaceBook but I have been using both for SEVERAL YEARS NOW and I know how I “NEED” to use these services and I know how I “WANT” to use these services and NEITHER My Space or FaceBook are really making it very easy to do….
In regards to My Space, I can say that the NEW INTERFACE is just HOSED – page load times are insanely slow – trying to fix anything on your “pages” is just ridiculous and you can’t customize your HTML CODE like you used to – it’s all hurry up and wait – and HOPE that your changes are accepted before your browser FREEZES.
They are trying to save the company by AD REVENUE and that was at least the SMARTEST THING ZUCKERMAN figured out when FB was first started – it better be COOL before you start pounding people with ADS or you’re doomed for failure! Especially back in mid-2000’s when FREE was really what the internet was about!
My BIGGEST GRIPE with MY SPACE is that IF you want to change your BAND NAME (which you used to could do easily) you’re STUCK – even if you’re going back to a band name that you used to use AND your ORIGINAL ACCOUNT NAME!
In short, if you used to have myspace.com/myoldband and that was your USER NAME – and you switched to myspace.com/mynewband – due to line up changes or for whatever reason and you decide to go BACK to your ORIGINAL user name – and change the name back to myspace.com/myoldband – you’re STUCK – you can’t change a THING!
That means that the YEARS of work you did adding friends or accepting comments, posting songs, etc are just WASTED! – (even if you held out the hope of getting paid via BMI/ASCAP for “PERFOMANCES” – yeah RIGHT!) You won’t see a dime! GREAT BUSINESS MODEL for the songwriters, publisher or OWNERS of the copyrights – yeah, BMI/ASCAP – you guys were behind the ball as well! But seriously, My Space,
what are you thinking? The good folks at MY SPACE have taken a pretty viable entity and just RUINED IT – and that take us to how FaceBook took over and really messed up as well!
It used to be that FaceBook was about adding FRIENDS – well that was GREAT – in fact, you could hook up with old friends from a LONG TIME ago – all was well with the world unless you were being STALKED or contacted by people that you really didn’t want to hear from and there was NOT a blocking tool – but after some REALLY bad things happened with FaceBook users then FB got a wake up call and started to implement MORE privacy controls, blocking features, etc – they STILL have OPPRESIVE if NOT BLATANT copyright and publicity rights violations but again, I digress.
When FaceBook created FAN PAGES – well that was their entrée into getting BANDS to sign up so they could take on MY SPACE – that’s cool – why not? But then BUSINESSES got into the FRAY and everything got pretty much out of control – way too many companies signing up which meant that BAND FAN PAGES fell by the wayside. Why else call them “FAN PAGES?” – Who is REALY a FAN of a “business” or BRAND! Sure you may LIKE that brand but were you a FAN? Hence they changed the game again – and now you have to LIKE a business or a Band. But what really got me is when they MOVED your BAND PROFILE off your “personal page” and made you move it to your BANDS FAN PAGE! Now there goes your up to 5000 friends that can NO LONGER access your music, videos through PAID and/or ROYATLY based applications like REVERBNATION – and spins or views of videos COST NOTHING to the viewers – if they want to BUY your song(s) – well that’s a different story.
But NOW you’ve got to go PANDER to your friends to JOIN your FAN PAGE – not cool! I know I HATE it when I get some really bad band that wants me to become a FAN (or NOW “LIKE” that band) and with the Band Profile being MOVED that also meant that ALL of your “personal friends” had to join your Fan Page just so that you could get “spins” and/or downloads from Reverbnation – hence royalties went from being PRETTY DECENT to NOT SO DECENT unless of course you want to BUG all of your existing friends to JOIN your FAN PAGE – and unless you’re offering some INCENTIVE (coupons for business, or in the case of bands – a FREE something) and that’s insane as BAND/ARISTS and SONGWREITERS already are GIVING AWAY their music basically FOR FREE anyway – how are these young bands supposed to make ANY MONEY much less a living when they are giving away everything for FREE!
I’m all for the bands that want to GIVE AWAY FREE downloads if that’s their business model as they can make money in SO MANY OTHER WAYS – but for those bands that are just getting started even an EXTRA $25 a month is a HUGE HELP – and of course, I think it’s better to give away your CD – IF your fans buy your T-Shirt for a reasonable price! The fan gets a FREE CD – the band gets FREE ADVERTISING when that fan wears the T-Shirt; a pretty good trade off!
But NOW FB no longer allows you to CHANGE your BAND’s PROFILE NAME if you have over 100 LIKES – not sure WHY there’s a 100 “LIKES” cut-off point but a lot of bands need to change their name and NOT have to start COMPLETELY OVER building a fan base on FaceBook Fan Page – so instead of Facebook being a COOL alternative to “MY SPACE” to post your music AND also a way of generating actual REVENUES – you’re STUCK with your ORIGINAL FAN PAGE or you have to START ALL over again and bug your “friends” to LIKE your NEW BAND PAGE. Once again, big business comes into the COOL SCENE and messes it up for EVERYBODY!
I just wish that both of these companies would try to look at things for the ARTISTS and/or BANDS POINT of VIEW and understand that name changes (even trademark issues will come up – case in point – I’m changing my band name BACK to Steve Moore & The New South because FACEBOOK has ALLOWED at least four of five OTHER “Cowboy Killers” use the same name) At least at one time on MY SPACE you couldn’t have the same BAND NAME (or at least USER NAME) on your account so some other band couldn’t cause confusion in the market place as to which band is which! You surely don’t want to buy songs from the WRONG BAND and get inferior music – or music that’s NOT even what you THOUGHT You were buying!
And I certainly don’t want to have to file injunctions in FEDERAL COURT to get these OTHER BANDS to STOP using my band name as I KNOW I was first in time – hence first in right – but FACEBOOK should NOT allow bands to use the same name that’s already been taken! The other option is to take on FACEBOOK in a class action to stop rampant TM infringement – but whomever wants to fight a company with unlimited amounts of MONEY to battle it out in court is going to be losing before they EVEN START! And don’t expect the USPTO or any other organization to help you out – as nobody really cares about the ARTIST anymore- sure they LOVE to listen to music- and they have their favorite bands – but since it’s so accessible and for the most part FREE I doubt any regular fan would even take the time to write a letter to FB to complain or even help out the band that’s haven their name STOLEN on FACEBOOK!
Well that’s enough ranting for today – as now I’ve got all this work to do to create a new FAN PAGE, change all my accounts with Reverbnation, etc, change ALL of the logos, take down ALL of my songs from iTunes – and change EVERYTHING back to the ONE NAME that I KNOW that NOBODY else is USING – in short, I’ve got to START ALL OVER AGAIN - thanks to the NEW policies of My Space and FaceBook!
On behalf of myself and 10’s of thousands of other similarly situated bands, artists, songwriters and publishers – I’d like to say “Thanks FB and MY SPACE!” That’s all we needed was a TON of work lost and a TON of work to get BACK to where we were – which is NOW IMPOSSIBLE!
SM @ MSO
Music Fan Pages – were at one time was THE exclusive purview of My Space (and they are STILL vying for bands and artist at MY SPACE more so than anything else - but they have just suffered a huge BRAIN DRAIN and lost 50% of their Employees so we'll see how much longer they can last) so FaceBook Fan Pages are going to FILL that GAP in services and hence gain more market share – but even FaceBook is getting IT WRONG!
I’m certainly no expert on how to code such huge endeavors such as My Space or FaceBook but I have been using both for SEVERAL YEARS NOW and I know how I “NEED” to use these services and I know how I “WANT” to use these services and NEITHER My Space or FaceBook are really making it very easy to do….
In regards to My Space, I can say that the NEW INTERFACE is just HOSED – page load times are insanely slow – trying to fix anything on your “pages” is just ridiculous and you can’t customize your HTML CODE like you used to – it’s all hurry up and wait – and HOPE that your changes are accepted before your browser FREEZES.
They are trying to save the company by AD REVENUE and that was at least the SMARTEST THING ZUCKERMAN figured out when FB was first started – it better be COOL before you start pounding people with ADS or you’re doomed for failure! Especially back in mid-2000’s when FREE was really what the internet was about!
My BIGGEST GRIPE with MY SPACE is that IF you want to change your BAND NAME (which you used to could do easily) you’re STUCK – even if you’re going back to a band name that you used to use AND your ORIGINAL ACCOUNT NAME!
In short, if you used to have myspace.com/myoldband and that was your USER NAME – and you switched to myspace.com/mynewband – due to line up changes or for whatever reason and you decide to go BACK to your ORIGINAL user name – and change the name back to myspace.com/myoldband – you’re STUCK – you can’t change a THING!
That means that the YEARS of work you did adding friends or accepting comments, posting songs, etc are just WASTED! – (even if you held out the hope of getting paid via BMI/ASCAP for “PERFOMANCES” – yeah RIGHT!) You won’t see a dime! GREAT BUSINESS MODEL for the songwriters, publisher or OWNERS of the copyrights – yeah, BMI/ASCAP – you guys were behind the ball as well! But seriously, My Space,
what are you thinking? The good folks at MY SPACE have taken a pretty viable entity and just RUINED IT – and that take us to how FaceBook took over and really messed up as well!
It used to be that FaceBook was about adding FRIENDS – well that was GREAT – in fact, you could hook up with old friends from a LONG TIME ago – all was well with the world unless you were being STALKED or contacted by people that you really didn’t want to hear from and there was NOT a blocking tool – but after some REALLY bad things happened with FaceBook users then FB got a wake up call and started to implement MORE privacy controls, blocking features, etc – they STILL have OPPRESIVE if NOT BLATANT copyright and publicity rights violations but again, I digress.
When FaceBook created FAN PAGES – well that was their entrée into getting BANDS to sign up so they could take on MY SPACE – that’s cool – why not? But then BUSINESSES got into the FRAY and everything got pretty much out of control – way too many companies signing up which meant that BAND FAN PAGES fell by the wayside. Why else call them “FAN PAGES?” – Who is REALY a FAN of a “business” or BRAND! Sure you may LIKE that brand but were you a FAN? Hence they changed the game again – and now you have to LIKE a business or a Band. But what really got me is when they MOVED your BAND PROFILE off your “personal page” and made you move it to your BANDS FAN PAGE! Now there goes your up to 5000 friends that can NO LONGER access your music, videos through PAID and/or ROYATLY based applications like REVERBNATION – and spins or views of videos COST NOTHING to the viewers – if they want to BUY your song(s) – well that’s a different story.
But NOW you’ve got to go PANDER to your friends to JOIN your FAN PAGE – not cool! I know I HATE it when I get some really bad band that wants me to become a FAN (or NOW “LIKE” that band) and with the Band Profile being MOVED that also meant that ALL of your “personal friends” had to join your Fan Page just so that you could get “spins” and/or downloads from Reverbnation – hence royalties went from being PRETTY DECENT to NOT SO DECENT unless of course you want to BUG all of your existing friends to JOIN your FAN PAGE – and unless you’re offering some INCENTIVE (coupons for business, or in the case of bands – a FREE something) and that’s insane as BAND/ARISTS and SONGWREITERS already are GIVING AWAY their music basically FOR FREE anyway – how are these young bands supposed to make ANY MONEY much less a living when they are giving away everything for FREE!
I’m all for the bands that want to GIVE AWAY FREE downloads if that’s their business model as they can make money in SO MANY OTHER WAYS – but for those bands that are just getting started even an EXTRA $25 a month is a HUGE HELP – and of course, I think it’s better to give away your CD – IF your fans buy your T-Shirt for a reasonable price! The fan gets a FREE CD – the band gets FREE ADVERTISING when that fan wears the T-Shirt; a pretty good trade off!
But NOW FB no longer allows you to CHANGE your BAND’s PROFILE NAME if you have over 100 LIKES – not sure WHY there’s a 100 “LIKES” cut-off point but a lot of bands need to change their name and NOT have to start COMPLETELY OVER building a fan base on FaceBook Fan Page – so instead of Facebook being a COOL alternative to “MY SPACE” to post your music AND also a way of generating actual REVENUES – you’re STUCK with your ORIGINAL FAN PAGE or you have to START ALL over again and bug your “friends” to LIKE your NEW BAND PAGE. Once again, big business comes into the COOL SCENE and messes it up for EVERYBODY!
I just wish that both of these companies would try to look at things for the ARTISTS and/or BANDS POINT of VIEW and understand that name changes (even trademark issues will come up – case in point – I’m changing my band name BACK to Steve Moore & The New South because FACEBOOK has ALLOWED at least four of five OTHER “Cowboy Killers” use the same name) At least at one time on MY SPACE you couldn’t have the same BAND NAME (or at least USER NAME) on your account so some other band couldn’t cause confusion in the market place as to which band is which! You surely don’t want to buy songs from the WRONG BAND and get inferior music – or music that’s NOT even what you THOUGHT You were buying!
And I certainly don’t want to have to file injunctions in FEDERAL COURT to get these OTHER BANDS to STOP using my band name as I KNOW I was first in time – hence first in right – but FACEBOOK should NOT allow bands to use the same name that’s already been taken! The other option is to take on FACEBOOK in a class action to stop rampant TM infringement – but whomever wants to fight a company with unlimited amounts of MONEY to battle it out in court is going to be losing before they EVEN START! And don’t expect the USPTO or any other organization to help you out – as nobody really cares about the ARTIST anymore- sure they LOVE to listen to music- and they have their favorite bands – but since it’s so accessible and for the most part FREE I doubt any regular fan would even take the time to write a letter to FB to complain or even help out the band that’s haven their name STOLEN on FACEBOOK!
Well that’s enough ranting for today – as now I’ve got all this work to do to create a new FAN PAGE, change all my accounts with Reverbnation, etc, change ALL of the logos, take down ALL of my songs from iTunes – and change EVERYTHING back to the ONE NAME that I KNOW that NOBODY else is USING – in short, I’ve got to START ALL OVER AGAIN - thanks to the NEW policies of My Space and FaceBook!
On behalf of myself and 10’s of thousands of other similarly situated bands, artists, songwriters and publishers – I’d like to say “Thanks FB and MY SPACE!” That’s all we needed was a TON of work lost and a TON of work to get BACK to where we were – which is NOW IMPOSSIBLE!
SM @ MSO
