Bands using MySpace to take their music to a whole new audience
In living rooms, basements and garages everywhere, bands are playing, practicing and honing their chops. This is nothing new. The idea of playing in garage band is almost as old as rock ‘n’ roll itself. So what’s different about this new wave of rock ‘n’ roll dreamers?
Thanks to recording software and MySpace, every single one of them has the chance to be heard by millions of people around the world.
And it isn’t just four teenagers playing power chords on knock-off Fender Stratocasters that are taking advantage of MySpace. Established Cache Valley bands are using the online community to get their music out to potential fans.
“It opens it up for small-town bands, like us,” Blind Iris drummer Tyler Forsberg said. “If you look at us, we’re a band from Logan, Utah, and in the general idea of the world, Logan is small – extremely small – but yet bands from Logan can have international plays.”
Blind Iris, an alternative rock band, has been on MySpace for about a year and a half, and in that time they have seen some of the conveniences MySpace provides.
“The digital world makes things a lot easier,” Forsberg said.
Forsberg isn’t alone in his thoughts about MySpace.
“Everyone talks like MySpace is some bug. But seriously, those are the people who aren’t in bands. MySpace is amazing for bands,” Ben Hibshman of The Shuttles said. The Shuttles are an indie, folk-rock band.
In his two and a half years of using MySpace for his band, Hibshman has found it to be a great way to set up gigs, get new fans and let people hear his music.
The blues-rock band, The Rock Bandits have also used MySpace to gain new fans.
“It’s all about who you know, and MySpace is a good way to get to know more people and let other people get to know you,” said Marcus Steves, bass player for The Rock Bandits.
For an older band like Sunhouse Healers, MySpace acts as a connection to a younger fan base. With MySpace, they have been able to get some plays with the under-21 crowd, a market they weren’t looking to get into.
“It’s good for us because we’ll probably be playing bars for the rest of our lives, so we need to get that younger crowd primed. We need to prime the pump, so when they’re 21 they come out,” Sunhouse bassist Jarad McDonald said.
Sunhouse Healers, a blues-rock jam band, have been a band for seven years but are one of the newer bands on MySpace – they’ve only been a member since June 2006. They previously relied on a Web site but have found MySpace to be much easier and cheaper.
“You don’t have to deal with the Web site update rigga-ma-roll,” McDonald said. “In fact, if we didn’t have 1,000 CDs with our Web site plastered on it, I think I would get rid of our Web site.”
MySpace has also made it easier to advertise shows. Instead of making thousands of copies of homemade flyers, bands just have to post bulletins or send messages to advertise shows.
According to the bands, MySpace has even made it easier to book shows, because it’s a great promotional tool. And since venues also have MySpace pages, a band can find out if a venue needs an opening act. If they do, the band no longer has to send a promo kit in the mail – the band’s MySpace page acts as an online promo kit.
With venues, bands and other musicians on MySpace, there is a sense of community building.
It is a music community that has “many voices,” Tanner Lex Jones, singer and guitarist for The Rock Bandits said.
“The thing about MySpace is its popularity and its neutrality makes it so powerful. That way everyone gets something out of it. It has that way of shrinking the world,” he said.
This community of many voices opens up the market for creativity, Forsberg said.
“There are a lot of niches for music that you wouldn’t be able to reach a large crowd with … There is a lot bigger chance of getting some exposure on MySpace,” Eric Peatross, keyboardist for The Rock Bandits, said.
“Anyone with a microphone and a program can record their music and throw it onto MySpace, and people can weed out what’s good and what’s bad,” Hibshman said.
The community feel is evident when you look at each band’s top friends. Although different bands take different approaches, most have at least a few other local bands on their page.
Sunhouse puts local bands on their page to help the local scene, McDonald said. This seems to be the prevailing attitude.
MySpace also allows local bands to be a part of a community of musicians that includes some of the biggest bands in the world. And with MySpace, all the bands are on a pretty level playing field, Sunhouse singer and guitarist Joshua Johnson said.
“It takes away that gap between major label bands and underground, unsigned bands,” Forsberg said. “It closes that gap so much, because anyone can go on there and listen to any band and any song. And it kind of takes a little bit of the bias away.”
“With MySpace, everyone is kind of on the same playing field with what they can do,” Johnson said. “So someone doesn’t go look at your MySpace and make a snap judgment about how successful you are.”
People may not be able to get a sense for a band’s success, but they can get something more than just the names of the members and their influences from the band’s page. Some bands use their MySpace pages to show off a little bit of their personality, giving potential fans an insight they may not otherwise get.
Like all the other bands, the Sunhouse Healers’ page says a lot about them. It mixes humor with their serious passion for music.
“That’s the fun thing about MySpace, you don’t have to be completely serious all the time. You can have fun with it a little bit,” McDonald said. “We’re pretty damn serious about our music, so it’s fun to kind of be able to break out of that mold a little bit and be able to joke around.”
Although bands seem to like MySpace overall, there are still things that cause some to worry. The biggest of these worries involves the huge number of bands on MySpace and the ease with which bands can get exposure.
-dabake@cc.usu.edu