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I wonder if we could manage to take up that opportunity and create a market that is a little better for the artists and get rid of the dinosaurs. podshow is interesting, but they sound a little like they just want to replace one dinosaur with another. I currently have an eye on AMP since their approach somehow feels right. But yes, there are others.

Sorry I had to feed my pet peeve for a moment. Now were are we? Oh yes, the rec companies wanting their share on ipod sales - wouldn't be a something like the canadian music tax, imposed by some ASCAP-like organisation, be something like that?
In Canada it seems to be illegal, but is it here?

Zero calls since I added my number to the list, and I even put it up on MySpace!

For a good time, call 910-528-6711.

I can see it now...these dolphins swimming around in their natural home trying to get these damn "DART GUNS" off of themselves, Oh wait I bet they've already figured out how to get them off, considering how smart these animals are. Very funny story and an interesting topic of discussion for and against animal-human "cooperation"...all in the name of terror huh? It's ridiculous - LOL http://www.myspace.com/biggreddy

NWO will stop at nothing to rule over our lives in such orderly fashion that we have no idea why. http://www.myspace.com/biggreddy

I submit to you the fact that you are an angry little troll: Mr. orangetrashface who also posts at Ars and has to attempt to assert himself there as well in such eloquent replies as these:

Yeah, which is exactly why my point that they haven't exactly shown us anything new still stands. If they've shown some new games- please show me where that is a FACT and not just a RUMOR.

Until then you can climb down off your high goddamn horse.

And gems such as this from around the net:
actually, you are mistaken.
mammals evolved, like reptiles and amphibia, from fish. fish originated from single-celled organisms. or do you think whales were once elephants.

there are still fish swimming deep under the sea of South Africa, almost extinct, with the bone structure of mammals (evolved fish dont have bones). The human foetus, in fact, at one stage has gill ridges, that later turn into the ear.

Fish don't have bones, eh? You sure are smart!

And best of all we have: http://www.myspace.com/orangetrashface

Priceless. You are a total tool. Nice sideburns. And I like your semi-attempt to fancy yourself a MMA/grappling expert. *Please* tell me this is true and where your gym is in Norman Oaklahoma. I've fought MMA for some time and I'd love to actually get the chance to make good on my claims, we can settle this un-geeklike.

So "Docta Watson"/"Orangecrushface" do you really want to keep this up? I suggest you slink back to your very insightful evolution speaches (which you obviously are an expert on), and self-indulgent posts trying to discredit someone with actual industry experience while supporting a blatantly non-factual article, and go back to being a "paralibrarian," bass playing, misfit asshole.

Thank You, That is all.

http://www.myspace.com/fsmonster

he's there.... join up!

Sure I can sell my music online, but oh yeah, I can't get on iTunes as [an] independent artist.

You haven't heard of CDBaby? They'll take 5 of our CDs to start, and then, provided we sell relatively well, they will get us listed on the iTunes Music Store under their agreement, with no obligation on our part. They take a very small (9%)cut. They have helped many indie bands get on iTunes.

Any independent label worth its salt will be able to give you some type of marketing push, and while it may not be the biggest marketing campaign in the history of music, it will probably be in the right magazines for your area and do some good for your band. Any musician who thinks they can just play music, without having some sense of the business end of things is not going to go very far.

It's really that simple. Independent artists need to realize the tools are here, now, and available to us. Places like Dmusic, myspace music, soundclick, last.fm, and iRate let us find great undiscovered music which usually leads to new bands to contact and perhaps play shows with when we come through their town.

Touring's also a large part of it, and unfortunately, most of us will have to fund our first few tours. This has to be done, using online tools only helps so much. A band that doesn't come to my city gets less of my money, because if I like them, I'm going to try to buy a shirt, CD or sticker from their own merch booth. I know they get the profits from that, and not necessarily from when I buy the CD at Tower or HMV, or even from the concert ticket proceeds. I want them to get my money, and being able to do this makes me feel like my cash is not going to waste.

As for me, I've done my research, and I'll be out pushing my band Tonmeister.
As an aside, what are some opinions on donation links on band sites? Tacky?

I'd have to go with whatever system MySpace uses. I can't believe that any system could sustain such a heavy flow of pointless "X updated!" emails to hundreds of millions of users...

Vince Clarke is who he is because he's Vince Clarke, not because he has the equipment. My friend Jabwai makes music using Reason. He is signed by a few techno-oriented labels and performs regularly here in Dallas. Maybe you should give his stuff a listen and decide if he's "Vince Clarke-enabled."

Recently I upgraded my personal photo gallery to a new version of software, eliminating the need for a publicly accessible directory full of images. Well, since my site has been around for a few years, I've collected a goodly number of people at sites like LiveJournal, Xanga, MySpace, and various other sites who have taken to linking some of my full res photos (2MB-5MB each) as the background for their sites.

Most of these sites are especially crappy, and as such, the bandwidth used wasn't much, so for the time being I didn't do anything about it.

Well, with the removal of the albums directory, I decided to redirect all requests for images in it to this annoyingly animated strobing GIF. This has the wonderful affect of making many, many crappy sites blink horribly. Like this and this.

True. I really like the idea behind myspace, but perhaps they give a little too much freedom to their users. Pick a random girl's profile and the odds are that it will be "pimped out" with illegible colour combinations and a background image completely at odds with the text color.

But it's a little better now because at least we have high-quality monitors.

D

LOL, at least be light-hearted about about the evil tyranny big brother coming to "SAVE US ALL"....LOL....wow what a "NEW WORLD" we live in. Even discussing and planning this outright like it's something helpful to security against "terrorists" is absolutly ludacris. The Communists and the Capitalist world have been playing off one another for scores of decades.....DON'T BE FOOLED...This is not good for us, it only brings more tyranny. Tyranny is the war against the people, not a war against terror...There are so many secrets it isn't even funny. DOwn with NEO-communists!...Down with NEO-NAZIS, and DOWN with the never-ending TYRANNY of the NEW WORLD ORDER! GOD BLESS http://www.myspace.com/biggreddy

Do you see /. or any other massively popular site running M$ web services? No. They run Apache with PHP (or in Slashdot's case, Perl) to generate pages and handle a huge load while maintaining security. The only massively popular site I can think of offhand that runs M$ web services is MySpace.com. And that suffers from overloading and random crashes.
Apache is approaching 70% market share as measured by a survey of active and available Web servers from Netcraft. IIS and .NET are a joke.

... that should be blamed - it's the parents, and the fact that the culture hasn't realized gaming has grown up! I have a short essay with stats about this exact news story on my blog: http://blog.myspace.com/jayntampa

It's a popular site really, It was a smart move for them I'm sure. Hell, it's basically a singles site, except instead of hiding, everyone is vocal. I've met tons of people on myspace that i've met because of the website. http://www.myspace.com/noir_denver/ oddly, it works out as a great way to meet people. Hot girls too

Yes, it is a bit high school..

psha!! that's why every girl I've ever dated from that site has been a total immature cunt! at least I got laid. that's why I fell in love with the site.

Now, if only they could a) afford decent programmers and b) stop loading the site up with flash animations that suck my cpu dry.

programmers schmogrammers... if only they could afford decent servers... or at the programmer level, at least not base the damned site on coldfusion. (or is it based on IIS, I forget)

users customizing their personal pages are another thing that's a serious problem. with all of those scrolling picture animations of kimberly and her friends at the beach and everything and the stupid music videos. Some people have 45mb worth of content on their page!

oh yeah... I'm a loser.

If you've never taken a second to look at some of this stuff on MySpace, its just a bunch of people taking pics of themselves and waiting for compliments.
1. Add a list of horrible metalcore/emo-pseudo-teen-angst music (music played by 30 year olds, with lyrics written by 7th grade girls that just got off a SERIOUSLY DEEP 3 day relationship OMG)
2. Drop the names of a few obscure movies and old TV shows you were too young for
3. Guys- wear some girls jeans, and even if your shooting star tatoo is still red take a pic immediately as its added points!
4. Girls- wear your makeup like you're 4 years old and just broke into mommy's purse
...much more can be added I know.

As of 2:35 PM, the summary looks like this:

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday July 19, @02:26PM
from the murdoch-immediately-propositioned-for-cyber dept.
jagger writes "a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4695495. stm">News Corp announced on Monday that it , owner of the popular MySpace.com social networking site, http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=166400491&tid=13692">for $580 million. This follows an announcement by News Corp on Friday that it is creating an Internet division to hold the company's sports, news and entertainment sites."

More correctly, it should look like this:

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday July 19, @02:26PM
from the editing-is-for-wimps dept.
someguy writes News Corp is a massive media conflomerate owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. News Corp recently announced that they are moving into the internet market, with the acquisition of Intermix media, which runs the popular MySpace.com social networking site. For more information, refer to this BBC news article, and this information week article.

BBC Article text is:

News Corp in $580m internet buy

News Corp, the company run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has made one of its first major internet purchases.

It has bought Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, the fifth most-viewed internet domain in the US and owner of other sites for $580m (£332.85m).

Mr Murdoch says the networking site will drive traffic to his Fox TV sites.

Last week the company set up a new internet unit. Mr Murdoch has said that newspapers have been slow to respond to competition from the internet.

Advertising advantage

"With a significant amount of advertising dollars moving from traditional outlets to online, News Corp, like most media companies, is looking to boost its internet assets," Alan Gould, an analyst at Natexis Bleichroeder, told Reuters.

The US market for internet advertising is growing at 15% in 2005, according to media buyers Universal McCann.

Myspace.com users connect to the site for dating, making friends, professional networking and sharing interests.

Earlier this year, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Intermix of deceptive business practices, including the use of spyware that delivered pop-up adverts and redirected users to its search engine.

Intermix agreed to pay $7.9m to settle the suit but did not admit wrongdoing.

InformationWeek article:

News Corp. To Acquire Intermix Media July 18, 2005

The move triples News Corp.'s reach among U.S. Internet users and makes it a player in the online social-networking market. By Antone Gonsalves
InternetWeek

News Corp. on Monday said it has agreed to acquire Intermix Media Inc., which owns more than 30 e-commerce and media websites, for $580 million in cash, tripling News Corp.'s reach among U.S. Internet users and making it a player in the online social-networking market.

In a separate deal, Intermix announced on Monday that it has acquired the 47 percent of social networking site MySpace.com that it didn't already own.

In the News Corp. agreement, the Los Angeles based media giant would pay $12 per common share of Intermix stock, or about $580 million. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter, pending approval of Intermix stockholders.

MySpace.com and Intermix's other

If is isn't enough to publish dupes everyday, now BROKEN CODE made it onto the front page.

Are you sure that Zonk checked this?

It should read "News Corp announced on Monday that it, owner of the popular MySpace.com social networking site, for $580 million. This follows an announcement by News Corp on Friday that it is creating an Internet division to hold the company's sports, news and entertainment sites."

I've been blogging the whole experience on myspace. Isotope Lab

I think when he says " to the economy" he means " to my money". Doesnt he own some oil-wells in texas? He would lose a lot of money if people didnt need to buy oil... Harken, O thou plaything of Beelzebub, for you will be trampled by a herd of stampeding pigs! ---- http://www.myspace.com/freekymayne

Here is her myspace page, its got a stream of said song.

http://www.myspace.com/quantazelle

Gary Niger of the GNAA has his own Myspace!

start + lol = oops

http://www.myspace.com/garyniger

The GNAA has gotten their own myspace myspace now.

It used to be a great place were you could go drink a great cup of coffee and probably meet a cute indy chick, but ever since WiFi, everyone is so buried in their iBooks updating their MySpace page that no one talks to each other.

The best part is watching the the Seattle Craigslist Missed Connection page fill up with "You are a cute 20 that something redhead sitting over there in the corner. Damn I wish you'd close your iBook so I could talk to you." posts.

It's worth noting that Intermix also runs the popular "networking" website MySpace. This site is used by lots of people, and many bands have pages set up on there. Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame even has a profile on there.

Makes you wonder what they're doing with the information people put on there.

It's worth noting that Intermix also runs the popular "networking" website MySpace. This site is used by lots of people, and many bands have pages set up on there. Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame even has a profile on there.

Makes you wonder what they're doing with the information people put on there.

It's hard to find a halfway attractive girl, under 18, not living in a third world country, who doesn't have a picture like this on a website somewhere : 15 Year Olds Don't be surprised to see more of this.

I bought an album on a whim called OMIFUK I got the Screw Attack!@#! (yes, I'm completely serious). The artist's name is Evil Tom Waits (again, completely serious)... the liner notes explain that all he did was play video games and practice music as a kid, so he figured it was a perfect match and covered the entire Metroid soundtrack... just from memory. And I have to admit, it's damn good. Unfortunately, all the information I can find on him is this and this, which cotains a sample of the music. It's suprisingly good, although it gets more and more off course as the album progresses (which is to be expected... that game was long.

Hmm... the link doesn't seem to work with that slash at the end. Try this one: http://www.myspace.com/buttonmashers

They're ok, but the arrangements aren't that great. I like the performance art piece of it, though... especially the Tetris blocks. If you want some quality video game a capella music, though, you should check out http://www.myspace.com/buttonmashers/. It's a lot more true to the original music; the arrangements pretty much just substitute voices for the original instruments.

Just use MySpace

One really neat feature of Flash is its ability to stream an MP3 file within the browser, and do so portably and easily. Take the Xploding Plastix site -- this is an excellent demonstration of Flash done right. (It also helps that their music's great.) Pure Volume and My Space have Flash-based players as well, though the S/N ratio there is pretty weak.

It's a double-edged sword, though, and for every site that uses Flash in a decent manner like this, there's a Flash ad with sound effects, and two more with graphics that slide, blink, spin, change colors, and suck up a lot of CPU for no good reason. On top of that, now we have Flash-based click tracking. This seems to happen with a lot of promising technologies; it has an obvious benefit, but the wrong people started using it for the wrong things. Fortunately, at least there's Flash click-to-play.

I like just advertising on /.

Spackle

My friends in the band HPD have done pretty well just playing shows and getting their name out via Myspace. Unfortunately, they haven't released an album yet, because quite a few people ask to buy one after a show. I think they'd tell you that it is most important to get your name out locally by doing as many shows as possible.

It all depends on what you want to be doing. If you want to be heard on the radio 24/7/365, then you probably need to try to get with a major label and hope you don't lose your shirt in the process. If you're content with making some modest amounts of money and willing to tour a lot, then an indie label is probably your best bet.

here's one: first you make a myspace music account, then you plug it as often as possible. Like the one for my band, The Apples tee hee hee

I've spoken about distaste for pirating here in the past, but as the manager of an indie rock band, I'll also swear by P2P as a promotion mechanism.

Small bands make virtually nothing from club appearances. The money, at least at the beginning, is in merchandise- t-shirts, stickers, and CDs.

Every last one of them provides free downloads on sites such as Pure Volume or on My Space They still realize CD sales at performances and via web purchase as they chase the holy grail- the record contract.

File trading has, does, and will still work as part of a comprehensive business model. The Grateful Dead certainly did rather well considering that nearly everything they ever did can be downloaded from Archive.org.

P2P becomes dicey when a group's success is predicated on album sales, and not performance money. I don't think a lot of Steely Dan albums would have ever surfaced if P2P was a dominant medium in their period.

Most importantly though, it is still a decision that the artists must make- do they want to sacrifice the financial protection offered by copyright law or open the doors in hopes of atracting an audience. In the first, they've got a business entity whose hands are in the pot- in the latter, they are self-promoting and hoping to realize the success that brings.

If you want to see an example of how indie bands at their best work, check out Monty's Fan Club and see what a small band from Rhode Island can do with P2P and a willingness to get the music out there.

In the meantime, I'm going downstairs to get my kids to turn the damn guitars down.

My band uses MySpace.com to attract new listeners, and it's been the best. They should charge bands for this kind of exposure. Lots of new people at shows. When we post a show bulletin, people propagee the notices through the network, its a huge thing. Social networks are crazy good for bands. Oh, and there's lots of hot chicks too. Just beware the chicks who only take pictures from one particular angle. They're the fat ones. (they need love too).

Everybody I know now uses Myspace, mainly because they include actual bands as nodes and have an interface to upload and post mp3s, along with photos, blogging support, event announcements etc. It's a good way to promote and network music/art projects. (and there are a lot of hot chicks on there too!) I haven't logged into Orkut or Friendster in months.

Everyone and their mother who read that previous Slashdot anti-privacy post will of told ten people.

...playing with my band, Get Precious on Sunday, March 20th, at Dingbats, located at 620 Van Houten Ave. in beautiful Clifton, New Jersey!

Tell us that Slashdot sent you, and we'll give you a hug.

http://profiles.myspace.com/users/3002407

simple myspace.com search yields that it maybe this guy

Anonymous Coward

he has 83 friends and we should spamm the shiet out of all of 'em.

Better yet - why not form an indy band and get some gigs (or just play in the garage for your own amusement). That is probably more enjoyable, and certainly costs less money over the long run.

More enjoyable? Absolutely. I've learned about a lot of really great bands through my bandmates. Plus, I've met other local musicians and seen a lot of fellow local bands.

Costs less money? Not really, the money we make from gigs generally barely covers our practice space rent. Add in strings, drumheads, new equipment, you name it, and it's a net loss. However, we're not in it for the money. I have a real job, and I'm getting too old to harbor any dreams of stardom. Which is just how I like it.

-J

like this one: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.v iewProfile&friendID=5078956&Mytoken=20050105201659 /

http://profiles.myspace.com/users/5194587 Apples and oranges! MP3 is mature tech compared to sat radio.

It would be like comparing VCR players to HD TV. Yeah, both play video, but they are much different.

I have been doing this too for a while.. taking a photo from my day and posting it with some ranting. I can attest to the addictive nature of it.. I wish Osama had been doing this, as it would have helped us get him.

my myspace page http://profiles.myspace.com/users/4374793http://pr ofiles.myspace.com/users/4374793

I just ordered my copy, but I am 100% sure that he managed to miss this guy (registration required, but free as in beer). Where something like this comes from.. I dare not venture.

Has anyone else find any real value from social networking sites?

It does not offer any significantly new functionality. What it does offer, is just a different style and look'n'feel. There are lots of different ways for people to communicate with one another, but for mysterious reasons that we'll never understand, some ways "click" with some people, and some don't. You meet different people on Usenet than you do on Slashdot, who are also different than you do on one of these types of services, who are also different than the people on another one of these types of services.

The thing is, the more options you have, the more likely that you'll just happen to like one of them and (here's the important part) use it. And when people use this stuff (whatever their reason is) then it's a good thing, because they get people talking to one another.

Don't worry if it plays off people's egos. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you start talking. As soon as you get one "date" (whether it's actually a romantic interlude with a member of the opposite sex, or whether you meet someone who has a common interest) then it instantly pays off. It'll be someone that, yeah, you could have emailed them, or visited their website, or instant messaged them, or replied to their blog, or whatever --- but you didn't, did you? You didn't meet them until you used this cheezy website. And it did the job.