I'm in a band (woo-hoo) and we have of course done the usual of setting up an Instagram and a Twitter and a Facebook and a Bandcamp but in the way of these things I'm struggling to engage. It's not that the band doesn't have a voice and aesthetic (it does) or that I don't like it (it's awesome; everything about it is awesome) but something deep in the architecture of the platforms. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Bandcamp. Pictures, words, people, stuff. Where is the music?
Music-first social networking sites struggle. I remember the giddy delight at Soundcloud, but it's struggled to move with the times or feel properly social, and we haven't even set up one for this band. The last band, for which I provided various services over the years, had one. That was during its high years. Whatever became of Audioboo? I used to fill it with snippets of found sound and birdsong. Now it's Audioboom and just another small scale online publisher. Last FM, RCRDLBL, emusic, there was even a DJ-ing one where you played at being a radio host and I actually managed to make never-met network-buddies through its delicious combination of blunt track-matching algorithms, and I-love-this interaction formats. All gone.
So of course I got to thinking about the first great social networking site that got music right. Myspace. Like so many, my data echo is still sat there in the empty halls, waiting for the winds of fashion and legislation to let in a shaft of light, to crack the door once more. I imagine Myspace Tom, grizzled and sat on his dusty throne, looking up confused as the music fans come flooding back, looking for their home online, that they still don't have, not really.
But of course, Myspace isn't what it once was, and Tom is doing other things now. We could do it though, couldn't we? Set up a Myspace for the band, like it's 2005 all over again?
Yeah, probably not.
Music-first social networking sites struggle. I remember the giddy delight at Soundcloud, but it's struggled to move with the times or feel properly social, and we haven't even set up one for this band. The last band, for which I provided various services over the years, had one. That was during its high years. Whatever became of Audioboo? I used to fill it with snippets of found sound and birdsong. Now it's Audioboom and just another small scale online publisher. Last FM, RCRDLBL, emusic, there was even a DJ-ing one where you played at being a radio host and I actually managed to make never-met network-buddies through its delicious combination of blunt track-matching algorithms, and I-love-this interaction formats. All gone.
So of course I got to thinking about the first great social networking site that got music right. Myspace. Like so many, my data echo is still sat there in the empty halls, waiting for the winds of fashion and legislation to let in a shaft of light, to crack the door once more. I imagine Myspace Tom, grizzled and sat on his dusty throne, looking up confused as the music fans come flooding back, looking for their home online, that they still don't have, not really.
But of course, Myspace isn't what it once was, and Tom is doing other things now. We could do it though, couldn't we? Set up a Myspace for the band, like it's 2005 all over again?
Yeah, probably not.
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