The Great MySpace Archive

One of the inevitable things about young or at least relatively young unsigned bands is that they will split up within a couple of years. The music industry is a dog and getting signed or at least enough gigs to make a living isn’t easy.

In the past, once a band had had its day, gained a local following, released a couple of EPs, played a few gigs, designed a few posters, had a go at a tour and then split up they’d only really be remembered by the small inner circle and the odd poster that might pop up in conversation.

Now, with almost every new band setting up a My Space profile things are very different. For what will likely be a VERY short period of time in the history of music (probably for another couple of years at most), a natural, organic databse of ‘garage bands’ will be created on a very large social website.

It will allow someone who vagualy remembers making an arse of themselves on the dance floor to a song by a local band that was brilliant at the time to find the band and the song and have a bit of a reminisce session.

Some bands are better at using My Space than others for promotion and have put their posters, songs and information about themselves on their profile page - which is brilliant for someone like me who is a bit of an unsigned band geek.

The whole becoming an archive is already happening aswell. I was looking at some of my contacts the other day and found myself reading through their profile which finished with: We’ve now split up!

Love My Space for the way it makes it easier for me as a music fan to find new bands and as a journalist to find info on bands I’m going to interview. Now I love it for the brilliant living archive it’s creating (as a bi-product) of small, unsigned, top local bands.

Unfortunatly My Space is currently a big player and bandwidth bills can’t be small. It’s only a matter of time before people get bored with it (something that’s already happening) and move on to the next thing.

This means that, when people move on, numbers of users get smaller, money gets tighter and services are cut - like music from bands not alive anymore - unfortunatly is the only word I can come up with.

You know My Space is nearly dead the day they offer money for signing up, adding music or just joining in.

What I’d really like to see is a brand new section of iTunes for new/unsigned bands. The bands could choose to offer their songs for free on their iTunes page or sell them through the store. That’s the only real way bands will start to make it without a big label behind them.

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