I wrote last week about MySpace’s impact on the music scene, yet I would be remiss if I neglected the most potent weapon in MySpace’s toolbox, independent music fans. This weapon is the growing army of independent music fans who use the service to evangelize their favorite acts.
Word of mouth. It’s an institution in brand-building, the single most desirable way to communicate goods or services to the public. Not coincidentally, it is also the most difficult method to apply in practice. Getting people to talk about your offering in casual conversation is the most sought after goal in marketing. But in order for it to work, you need to be offering something truly groundbreaking or spend a ton of money on advertising, publicizing your wares so widely that they become natural conversation starters. See Vonage for an example of the latter. No matter where you live, you can’t change the channel without seeing a Vonage ad. This spawns “Damn, have you SEEN all these Vonage ads?!” remarks amongst friends, family, or co-workers. See Napster during 1999 for an example of the former.
Until MySpace, this axiom of marketing left a lot of people out in the cold. A company (read: band) just starting out with meager funds has a difficult time stitching their name into “the public conciousness.” And it’s not like bands are anything new. There are thousands. MySpace changed all that. When a band sets up a profile, the band’s fans act to promote the music found on that profile. In my own day-to-day surfing, it’s entirely common to stumble upon a friend’s “comment board” and find comments from people raving about how great Band X is. Of course, a link to the band’s profile is provided so that their music might be found.
This is a big deal for the very reasons discussed earlier. The reason word of mouth is so effective is because people have finely trained filters for marketing messages. They rightly cast weary eyes on billboard-style advertisements that scream at them to do something. Cutting through this ingrained paranoia and distrust is a personal reccomendation from a trusted source: usually a friend, family member, or co-worker that the person has a pre-existing relationship with.
In the legendary musical comedy “The Blues Brothers”, Cab Calloway rounds up a group of underpriveledged orpans to plead with people to attend a concert that will help the orphanage pay its delinquent property taxes. MySpace is such a great launchpad for new musicians because it lets fans apply this method on such a high scale, with very little effort. Before long, any band worth its salt (and even some that aren’t) will enjoy swarms of traffic as a result of these MySpace music footsoldiers.
