Myspace is dead. Long live Myspace?
As you may have heard, Myspace is all but dead in the water and now Justin Timberlake is buying it.
I tried to use Myspace when I first got my fiction published but I couldn't keep up with it. The site's heyday as a promotional forum for artists was already long past and it was just a less user-friendly version of every other blog site. Surprisingly, as its popularity waned and it faded from the public eye I've found myself visiting it a lot more. Now that every 13 year-old and their tit-flashing college-aged big sister isn't the star attraction it's actually become a really good forum for discovering music again. I'm constantly searching for new bands to like and Myspace is awesome for this. It's one-stop shopping for tracks, tour dates, and photos that's a lot less buggy and faster-loading than many a band's "main" dot com site. To this end, I want to see it continue. And to this end I'm kind of excited about Justin Timberlake acquiring a majority share and wanting to take an active, day to day leadership role.
I respect Justin Timberlake a lot. Obviously, the musical genre he operates in is hit-and-miss for me at best, but he's a terrific actor and he always comes off as taking his work seriously whether it's acting or music. He says he wants to help other musicians get noticed via Myspace and I believe him.
What worries me, of course is the age-old truism that artists are not business people. Even if the have both the desire and the aptitude to be business people they typically just flat-out don't have the time. (Try making some art sometime. It eats a big chunk of your day.) And Timberlake's not exactly a guy who has long, empty weekends to fill with running a business while he's sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. I believe he really can get Myspace back to where it needs to be... if he actually can stay involved in it like he's talking about. And that's a big if. I want to believe in the guy. But my fear is it will wind up a discarded toy once he loses interest in it.
I guess if Myspace never recovers and goes away forever we'll have learned a valuable lesson: Don't waste your time developing thousands of page layouts designed to appeal to suburban white teenager's fantasies of the urban gangsta life style when your competitors are developing apps and content. And if it does never recover, well, it made Rupert Murdoch lose a ton of money and that ain't too bad at the end of the day.
I tried to use Myspace when I first got my fiction published but I couldn't keep up with it. The site's heyday as a promotional forum for artists was already long past and it was just a less user-friendly version of every other blog site. Surprisingly, as its popularity waned and it faded from the public eye I've found myself visiting it a lot more. Now that every 13 year-old and their tit-flashing college-aged big sister isn't the star attraction it's actually become a really good forum for discovering music again. I'm constantly searching for new bands to like and Myspace is awesome for this. It's one-stop shopping for tracks, tour dates, and photos that's a lot less buggy and faster-loading than many a band's "main" dot com site. To this end, I want to see it continue. And to this end I'm kind of excited about Justin Timberlake acquiring a majority share and wanting to take an active, day to day leadership role.
I respect Justin Timberlake a lot. Obviously, the musical genre he operates in is hit-and-miss for me at best, but he's a terrific actor and he always comes off as taking his work seriously whether it's acting or music. He says he wants to help other musicians get noticed via Myspace and I believe him.
What worries me, of course is the age-old truism that artists are not business people. Even if the have both the desire and the aptitude to be business people they typically just flat-out don't have the time. (Try making some art sometime. It eats a big chunk of your day.) And Timberlake's not exactly a guy who has long, empty weekends to fill with running a business while he's sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. I believe he really can get Myspace back to where it needs to be... if he actually can stay involved in it like he's talking about. And that's a big if. I want to believe in the guy. But my fear is it will wind up a discarded toy once he loses interest in it.
I guess if Myspace never recovers and goes away forever we'll have learned a valuable lesson: Don't waste your time developing thousands of page layouts designed to appeal to suburban white teenager's fantasies of the urban gangsta life style when your competitors are developing apps and content. And if it does never recover, well, it made Rupert Murdoch lose a ton of money and that ain't too bad at the end of the day.