Music business analyst and blogger Bob Lefsetz takes a strong swipe at MySpace in his recent blog posting, complaining about MySpace stability, usability and questions whether the #1 social networking site is really breaking bands. Mr. Lefsetz raises many good points, as the popularity of the site has grown faster than their ability to adjust their platform and make it more robust, and Mr. Lefsetz hypothesizes that MySpace will be supplanted by another player in the future, much as MySpace itself supplanted Friendster.
It’s hard to disagree when history has played out many games of technological leapfrog, but I think there’s more to consider. With over 50 million user created pages and traffic of over 30 million visitors each month, individual user investments in MySpace are significant and not easily abandoned. Whether or not MySpace is really breaking bands or not is irrelevant…the perception among labels, artists and managers is that MySpace is doing so, therefore they are eager to contribute to, prioritize and support MySpace–breaking a band out of MySpace is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
From my perspective, the landscape shift in social networking will be primarily based on one thing–portability of the user investment. It should be easy to simply pick up your lists of friends, bookmarks, tags, blog posting, favorites and other social networking assets and move them to a NEW social network, or to simultaneously belong to several at once, with a single interface that connects all your touch points. At that point, social networks become another media outlet, with content driving membership and exclusive content as the most valuable currency. With AOL about to enter the space and companies like Google and Yahoo making investments and innovations in their social networking platforms, a shakeout is inevitable.
Will MySpace retain their lead? Will someone figure out how to make media based social networking more appealing to adults and spawn a whole new market? Will AOL’s strategy of plugging into an established mass protocol like AIM create instant critical mass? Stay tuned….
1 response so far ↓
1 Eric // Feb 13, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Hi Syd,
Just wanted to drop a note to say that I enjoy this blog. It’s refreshing to see that there’s at least one person in the music industry who understands how much the marketing and distribution climate have changed with the rapid convergence of new media on the internet (ie. social marketing + consumer empowerment), digital media player technology, and so forth.
A couple years ago I interned at the Minneapolis (midwest regional) office of Universal Music and I couldn’t believe how trapped in the ol’ “tried and true” ways some of these music industry veterans were. The sad part is, when hiring new people, the labels seem to continue going after the young people who work the longest commitment in their unpaid internships or seem “well-connected” within the industry, rather than recruiting individuals who have a more creative marketing background or proven innovative thinking.
That’s all for now. Continue the good anaylsis!
- Eric
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