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Myspace – now with glitter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ois98ssvKA0

The first thing you should know about the Product Manager for MySpace Music is that he’s an independent musician. He’s in a band called Big Kid. That’s him playing the drums. He also writes most of the songs. I found that both encouraging and surprising.

Myspace Music Product Manager Steve Clark approached me through my blog to have a chat about what was going on at Myspace, the big changes that they were making, and what they were doing to belatedly address the fact that they have access to (as I put it) every frickin’ band on the planet.

Now, I’ve been critical of Myspace in the past (to say the least). My complaints have been many and varied, but my concerns have been especially with respect to the fact that all of their efforts in the music space have been directed exclusively at major labels – and the fact that as an interface, both for artists and for fans, it’s a pile of crap.

A friend of mine once joked that you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. Basically, Myspace has been rolled in glitter.

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On the road again

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I’ve been doing a little more travelling recently. After I got back from Dublin, I went to Groningen in the Netherlands to do a research project with my friends Ard & Lykle from New Music Labs.

I really like Groningen, and I try and get over to the Netherlands as often as I can. This time, I spent a couple of days there working on a project called Tribemonitor. It was funded by a university research initiative called IDEA (which stands for something, but I can’t remember what) and I’ve written up the outcome of that research in two blog posts:

– Measuring popularity in online music
– Social media reversals

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