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Why Last.FM is better than Myspace
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In the evolution of the Web 2.0 world tons of sites grow out of nowhere as social networking communities. An early darling of this revolution was mySpace. Marked as the heaven of promotions and marketing, mySpace is a first stop for many musical artists. But now with the growing content and user saturation of Last.FM, sites like mySpace are poised to become the second class citizens of artist promotions.
Comparatively both mySpace and Last.FM provide a unique environment for artists and users to communicate with the community. Both were grown around the many to many experience forum format, and easily scale down to a one to one dialogue. These sites provide anyone with access to the environment the ability to discover their favorite artists, as well as their own musical peers. But which one REALLY enhances value?
mySpace is the place where artists and fans can gather as many friends as possible. A place where they can rally and push for that superstar status appearing as the hit destination, collecting "friends" into the thousands. A badge of success not without its distraction; the majority of these numbers are based on an artificial value. Artists and bands with many friends do not necessarily translate into having many listeners or devoted fans.
Case in point, NIN... the new album Year Zero has been generating quite a stir to listeners and fans of Trent Reznors' music. While on mySpace the information is shared and exposed, it's mostly at the drive of the admin of the NIN page. Meanwhile on Last.FM,... as fans of the artist discover more of the album, whole new threads generatively appear, sharing the information directly between fans... and the evolution of content happens WITHOUT direct interaction from the band, or the NIN account owner. In-fact all the content on Last.FM regarding NIN was user created, although it might have been seeded by the artist, and is open for change as the listeners and fans see fit.
The environment of mySpace limits the set of options fans have regarding how they can access and share content on an artist... Last.FM furthers the options by allowing user generated content to have reference to the artist. additional user content, or other artists as the user base see fit.
Statistically, while mySpace artists can have thousands of "friends", Last.FM is populated with actual accounting information on listening habits... which is the true test of which artists are REALLY popular. Comparing some of the top artists in both environments shows some clear indications on who has real value.
While mySpace has all the control that labels like in creating and branding artists... A site like Last.FM shows the power of the community and builds in the "truthiness" of the artists' value. Friend ratings don't actually represent the value of the artist in comparison to how many people really are supporters / fans / listeners. That single function was something mySpace never planned for in their all glitz page creation and artist promotion. Regardless of promotional branding and "friend" value shaping, listeners only have one set of ears....
(Originally posted on Lx7.ca) | |
Comments
02/27/07
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jdg
some fucker on last.fm keeps pretending he is me tho.
how do u deal with that one?
02/27/07
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tonearm
myspace. so 2006.
02/28/07
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naw
I think they all suck!!! you should be using the orginator of the social networking tools built for and by EM artist EM411!!!
02/28/07
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utofbu
personally, I think I enjoy a good corned beef hash
02/28/07
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VC
shit, i just signed in to last fm and found out that theres some reggae artist called VC. This is dumb.
02/28/07
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reehc
some confusion between me & something called cheerleading
Top Tracks, Last Week:
Cheerleading + mixes - Say My Name (booty mix)
02/28/07
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bsr
last.fm is lush. my page: link and a simple last.fm app for blackberry pearl: link
02/28/07
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implexgrace
last.FM would be cool if the website was more flexable/customizable, and if they didn't totally fuck up how the actual artist changes their info. i can do nothing with implex grace artist page. lame.
if the two combined and allowed the artist to sell music, that would be ideal.
edited: Feb 28 2007
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tmns
love your artist description on lastfm michael
'implex grace is some dood. u know goes EEEEEEHHOOO into a mic and shit. yeah and like.. he goes and makes people trip out cos they are all WTF'
02/28/07
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implexgrace
haha i didn't make that either, i think maybe jdg did, but it's hard to tell
02/28/07
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everamzah
why myspace is better than last.fm: personalizable html and css
love the article tho, and while i don't definitively believe one is better than the other, i think you do wonderful work and encourage you to really keep it up!
02/28/07
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jdg
LOL i think it was me that put that for implx. LOL
fuck last FM
02/28/07
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Otterfan
The biggest advantage of last.fm over myspace is that it isn't completely fucking awful.
02/28/07
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vveerrgg
don't get me wrong... not like I'm gonna delete my mySpace accounts.... but as a fan of music and discovering artists to listen to... I've given up on myspace. It's more a promotional in comparison to to Last.FM. mySpace is too closed off as a environment.... design and CSS wise it's all a distraction to the fact that there isn't anything
and as for selling music. set yourself up as a label, or get your label to set up a label page, and build up the release info on your music. It's pretty straight forward .
02/28/07
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cosmosuave
I checked lastFM the other day and found tracks created by me on there yet I have never even posted anything on lastFM... What gives how did my tracks end up on lastFM not that I mind them being there but curious to how they got there...
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