Originally Posted by The Quirk Phenom

Upon reading the latest debacle Myspace has caused with it’s fans, I will not be surprised to see other social networking sites turn away from the now corporate Myspace and take a more genial approach to how they operate their sites. The frustrating thing about Myspace is the fact they are only willing to promote bands who they think are cool and those bands whose record companies are paying Myspace to advertise for them. Then when a great artist or band wants to advertise with Myspace the high and mighty employees snub artists who they do not deem “artistic” enough for their pedantic website.

Myspace does offer musicians a chance to promote their music and it is a great way for people to get their music heard especially for indie artists but the corporate conglomerate only picks and chooses who they want to put on their website.

Myspace was originally founded by people who wanted to offer a way for people to freely express themselves via a social networking site. Once the company went beyond the founders dreams, it was sold piece by piece to Fox for a substantial amount of money and it is now the Myspace it is today. Once the corporate company took over, the open source attitude Myspace had was almost non-existent.

Every band on Myspace which has a profile is on there for their fans. The bands with the highest numbers of plays should be embraced by Myspace. By not allowing bands with exceedingly high play numbers to advertise on the site, Myspace is not respecting the rights of their audience. The audience they continually ignore is the reason Myspace is so popular.

Take for example, the rock band, Trapt, plays numbered well into seventeen million. In a recent press release from the band about their upcoming album, they announced they had created their own Ning site. Whether you like them or not or whether they are considered “trendy” enough, every band with enough plays should be embraced by Myspace. Their manager, Drake Sutton-Shearer, made an interesting comment about the reason the band had created their own site. When you visit the band’s Myspace profile there is a blank page with a link to their new website. The read-between the lines here is clear another band has fallen victim to the Myspace artistic guidelines.

With Myspace’s artistic guidelines so high, how do the fans of bands like Trapt feel about being ignored by Myspace? And if Myspace keeps ignoring their audience how popular will they continue to be?