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MySpace or yours?

How MySpace rates in the promo races, and what you are signing away.

By David James & Terry Noone

Internet site "MySpace" has attracted a lot of attention lately, both positive and potentially negative. Superficially, it represents a form of global access to aspiring musicians. There are, of course, many stories of “overnight successes”, which, oddly, seem only to become successes when they gain traction in more conventional media.

MySpace is an example of a big business that hopes to craft viable enterprises out of the “long tail”: the massive number of providers who only get a small number of hits each. Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” writes “These infinite shelf space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: a very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatively small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number.”

That appears to be the emerging reality of businesses based on internet distribution, and Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace suggests that this model of participation might well be the future of mainstream media, as well. But will it mean much to musicians? After all, low sales do not help much, even if they do not come with the perilous indebtedness that usually accompanies a record deal.

We checked out the site to try to sort out the pros and cons.

Recent negative reports have dealt with MySpace's "terms and conditions" which require the granting of a limited, non-exclusive licence from the owner of any music posted on the site. The licence allows MySpace to "…use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and distribute…" posted music files without paying a fee. MySpace claims that this is only so that they can provide MySpace services: "…without the right to modify Member Content, MySpace.com would not be able to digitally compress music files that Members submit or otherwise format Content to satisfy technical requirements, and without the right to publicly perform Member Content, MySpace.com could not allow Users to listen to music posted by Members."

Significantly, the license does not allow MySpace to "… sell your Content, nor does the license grant MySpace.com the right to distribute your Content outside of the MySpace Services." Whether MySpace could give the content away over its system and for its own promotional purposes is not clear. MySpace users can, however, immediately cancel the licence at any time simply by cancelling their membership of the service. The compulsory licence agreement means the service is really only of use to artists writing and recording their own material or at least having control of the composer's, performer's and maker's copyrights. The agreement does emphasise that MySpace claims no ownership of the files or of any copyright in them.

Positive reports about MySpace have tended to emphasise the importance of the service in breaking new bands. The hype is that a MySpace presence is now essential for any new act hoping break through or be signed to a record company. It now appears that some of this hype is less than accurate. UK band Arctic Monkeys are often quoted as an example of this pheomenon but, according to The Guardian, MySpace had nothing to do with their rise

The MySpace Terms of Agreement disallow many kinds of commercial activities on the site. Notwithstanding this, bands and artists often offer links to where their recordings can be purchased either as downloads or on a mail order basis. It is not clear if this transgresses the "no commercial activity" demand of the agreement but since MySpace has not taken these links down (and the terms of Agreement make very clear that MySpace are completely free to remove anything they don't like) one could perhaps reasonably suppose that they do not.

The agreement generally indicates that MySpace takes no responsibility for any loss suffered in relation to being either a member of or a visitor to the site. In fact they make it pretty clear that they will not be responsible for anything at all, including a failure of the site to function. Since the service is free, you probably are getting what you pay for.

MySpace may be a useful tool as part of a total promotional and marketing strategy but does not appear to be the breakthough independent artist marketing solution many hope it to be.

(Quotes are from the MySpace "Terms of Use" agreement. The complete document is available here.)

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Fortune favours the broken

Last time I wrote, it was an over–elaborated rant about the prissy wankers that pretend to write music and play it, when all they wanna do is be cool. Idiots. Airheads. I hate em. Can’t stand ‘em. I also alighted upon the fact that songwriters, even good ones, seem to whinge a lot. That’s OK. People seem to dig it. See, it’s pretty damn obvious that if you fall on hard times and everything’s shit, then you’re gonna write some kick-arse songs.

And everything usually is shit when you’re tryin’ to be a “serious” musician. It’s a long hard road, and who knows if ye even wanna end up wherever the road takes you. Wreck and ruin probably. Fame and fortune? Bah!
But it is hard sometimes. Really hard. Trying to make a living out of music (at least from what I know about this town, Melbourne, and this country, Australia) is like trying to make a living out of thin air. Or trying to find a market for toenail clippings. I don’t know… it’s just hard, orright?

Here’s a little anecdote…

I try to make a point of being nice to door-bitches and merch-gals. Buy them a beer, have a chat with ‘em. They’ve got a dump of a job, and (oh, I’m not entirely altruistic, oh no!) just maybe they’ll let me in to that sold-out gig one day… Anyways, I was bein’ all nice and stuff to a merch-gal recently – she was on tour with a band we played with and she sold some of our CD’s in exchange for a couple of pints. And a brief yarn. That’s all.

A couple of nights later I went along to their final show of their tour, bumped into her again, said hi and she mentioned it was her night off tonight, time to relax… Eventually we got to talking about who/how/why she was.
Turns out she was the wife of one the band members. The band had been touring Australia almost constantly for the past year or so, so she’d decided that in order to spend time with her husband she’d have to bloody well come on tour with ‘em. And it ain’t cheap ferrying a bunch of rock stars around, so if ye wanna come along ye’d better either join the band and be unreal, or come along and do one of the crappy jobs for free. So she came along as merch-gal.
Now, it was her first adventure out for a while, and they’d been away from home for a three-week stint. At this she started to choke up slightly. Turns out they’d left their young daughter (young daughter being the reason for it being her first adventure out for a while) at home with Grandma, and hadn’t seen her in that whole time, and she’d just got off the phone to her…

Tonight was the last night of the tour, and she was feeling a worn-out and frazzled mixture of relief and hurry-the-fuck up and get me home to my little girl now!
She got teary, I got teary, her husband came over, they had a hug. I offered my best and felt fuckin’ sad. It ain’t all it’s cranked up to be all the time when you’re on the road. In fact, is it ever?

Then their manager came over and asked her if SHE COULD DO THE DOOR.
Geeeeeez…

She dried her eyes, said, “I thought…” and trailed off. Turning to me with a wry grin, she went off to do the job on her night off. Bloody hell, I said to my beer.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, this is the sort of shit that makes a great song.
“Grandma ain’t at home playing rock and roll. She’s singing lullabies to a baby girl. Daddy’s out singing for our supper every night. Don’t cry child it’ll be alright.”
You can live your life in a pleasant bubble and I don’t wanna know you. Get dirty! In this case, I’m leaning in support of saying that fortune favours the broken…
Oh goddy-god-god, I hope so.

On as lighter note - don't forget the Clinkerfields competition - spectacular prizes to be won!!

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