While I’m not ready to make funeral arrangements and stick the sucker in the ground, it has become apparent that MySpace is no longer a real contender when it comes to promoting your band. People have been declaring MySpace dead for a couple years now but I held out. I figured that MySpace would see that it was speeding down the highway of irrelevance and maybe change course (the off-ramp of new ideas, perhaps). I was wrong. Not only have they made no efforts to improve, the masses are hooked on Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably still a good idea to have and maintain a page on MySpace. I know bookers and promoters that use it to gauge a band’s popularity and show schedule. You can, however, stop posting bulletins, status updates, messages, and comments. No one reads those, seriously. Maintain the simplest of information and use your promotional energies elsewhere.

For fun, here are my lists of reasons why MySpace is as good as dead.

1) The site is slow, ugly, and poorly coded. And the ads, good gravy, the ADS!
Sites that take forever to load may as well not exist. Even if you have great content, it’s not going to matter. As our attention spans decrease, the speed at which websites load has to increase. MySpace takes forever to load, and when it does it’s just ugly. Their “new” messaging feature is late to market and the music player still sucks. It’s an eyesore of a website and an internet slum. They still have dancing baby ads!

2) MySpace has made no efforts to improve (MySpace Music does NOT count).
Recent “improvements” include upgraded messaging and MySpace 2.0 profile. Both suck.  MySpace had one thing over the competition: every band has a MySpace page. They decided not to capitalize on this. They still think they are a premier social networking site.

3) Friends and page views are easily faked.
As I mentioned, some bookers try to gauge a band’s popularity through MySpace. Number of friends, pageviews, song plays, show schedule, and date they joined are good information but they are easy to fudge. Not only that, newer popular acts may not use MySpace as heavily as older acts. This leads to an under-representation of their popularity on MySpace.

4) The huge inconsistency in band pages.
Facebook severely limits what you are able to customize on your page, and I thank them for it. MySpace pages are notoriously customized to the point where there is very little consistency. Bands try to fit everything including the kitchen sink into their page. From links to CDBaby, Amazon, and iTunes to social networking like Facebook, Twitter, and their website, I’ve had enough.

5) There are better alternatives.
At one point, MySpace was the place for bands to post their music. It was a great one-stop shop to post pictures, show schedules, songs, and information. Facebook caught up and is cleaner, simpler, and better integrated. Which leads me to the big one…

6) Your fans no longer use it.
MySpace is an abandoned parking lot. Sure, people stop by from time to time but it remains largely unused. Your fans have moved on. Bulletins, messages, and comments are likely to go unseen and unanswered. You have to go where the audience goes, and they aren’t checking their MySpace pages.