Myspace. – What went wrong?
Why oh why did Myspace have to suddenly deteriorate in such a monumental fashion? It makes my job SO much harder. In the good old days I simply had to log in and the world was at my feet. Bands would be leaping over themselves, begging me for interviews or reviews and I simply had to message a group (regardless of size or prestige) and within a week I’d receive a reply. These days I can’t even find a worthy band amidst the seemingly millions of artists now on the site…let alone one that actually still uses the damn thing. I stopped writing for a brief period in order to concentrate on gaining a few A-levels…and now that that has successfully blown up in my face I’m back to doing exactly what I love…except it’s not that easy is it? The tool I took for granted has hurtfully betrayed me; the site I knew and loved has been replaced by a condescending, superiority machine, constantly telling me that I “can’t” do this or that. I “can’t” have more than eight top friends anymore, I “can’t” view messages from over a month ago anymore, it’s a wonder the site isn’t lecturing me about how my parachute pants went out with the late 80s (they’re comfy, okay?) Furthermore, I can’t actually make anything work on my own page…everything seems to have bizarrely disappeared leaving what was initially a very effective way to conduct my affairs looking like the world’s most uninspired blog. What the hell has happened and who do I blame? Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong here and it’s preventing me from doing (what I pretend is) my job.
I’ll begin by asking: does anyone know how Myspace works now? Anyone? Concurrently, what is the purpose of Myspace nowadays? We all know that Facebook is the place we turn to to get our gossip, chat with friends online, casually stalk the girl next door or simply whittle away the hours rather than doing any work…so is Myspace really necessary at all? Well, to me, it certainly is…or was rather. Now they’ve re-modelled the site to resemble an embodiment of indie culture, to the point where it looks as if NME has shat all over the home page. It seems to have been re-vamped and marketed towards music and “culture” buffs. In other words, Myspace is purely now for bands and bands alone. Except, the creators have forgotten one key factor in this risky game of chance: bands don’t really use it…because they can’t. It’s just too hard. And the very idea that Myspace will be impossible for societies average joes and yet easily accessible to the elite, (the Gods-like ones, those we must all strive to be like) otherwise known as ‘musicians’, is bollocks.
I’m afraid to say I think they’ve confused musicians with Stephen Hawking. It would take an extremely alert astro-physicist to cut through the sheer amount of cyber-babble bullshit on the site and eventually work out how to use this mind-boggling excuse for a social network. I exaggerate of course, I’m sure a bio-chemist could do a perfectly acceptable job of deducing it all. Having said that, I genuinely do believe that the new Myspace may somewhere contain the Da Vinci Code. Perhaps that’s why we’re all finding it so difficult to use, somewhere deep down in our soles we don’t want to discover the truth behind this age old secret…we know it will inevitably be as boring as the book you see.
The problem with re-designing Myspace so that it’s geared directly towards bands not only isolates a dominant section of the public…but, in a way, devalues music. So hot on advertising bands bands bands is the site it seems there are now more artists than ever squeezing between its already crowded virtual pages. Interestingly the one thing I can get working upon my return to Myspace is the friend requests button and I assure you every day feels like a backwash of band after band, kid after kid asking me for a review or to listen to his tracks while browsing photos of his latest gig in Didsbury cricket club…either that or it’s some shaved headed pervert begging to share his STD with me. That’s right, Myspace is now solely for musicians and rapists, the common man is safely out of the equation! The majority of the talented successful groups don’t even login anymore. Find me on Myspace (although I highly doubt you’ll be able to) and browse my top friends, you’ll soon see what I mean. There are now so many bands uploading tracks onto the site it’s starting to look like the internet version of amateur night at the Apollo.
There’s so much argument that the new Myspace is back to its roots being “all about the bands” once again and I simply don’t agree…besides, who CARES about the bands? What about the journalists? There will always be sites promoting independent music, but for those writers who don’t just want to settle for blogging where do we turn? Do you have any idea how many writers there are in the world? I can count six on my street alone. There are thousands of us: sitting in basements, typing on Dell computers and drinking fatal amounts of coffee, writing novels and poetry and saying things like “I’ll get round to doing that later” while the minutes of our lives slip by in a wash of notepaper, alcohol abuse and blisters. How, I ask you, do we get noticed? Aside from having a huge, attention seeking rant like this and then begging your editor to publish it there really aren’t many ways. You’ve heard of the film The Social Network right? A tale of a young billionaire struggling with two simultaneous court cases held against him? Well, a far more compelling story, I assure you, would be the struggle of most poor, starving writers attempting to make Myspace bloody work for them!
Now obviously, I’m not for a second suggesting that the new Myspace isn’t good for the whole. Looking at it from a less cynical point of view, it clearly is.
It’s just for the individual it’s a fucking nightmare.