The 'Do-it-yourself' Guide to Stardom     Artist-made music-marketing on the web 2.0 social network MySpace

        In 2003 something new and innovative entered the stage of the global music business online. It was an online            platform on the Web 2.0, a social network, which had not existed in this manner before. The online community provided a profile-site to everyone who wanted to become its member. Each of them could get their own space on the web - a so-called MySpace. 
Myspace.com is a community relying on user-generated content and is hence counted as a part of the Web 2.0. Amongst others, music and photographs can be uploaded and stories published. Social interaction takes place in the form of adding friends, posting comments on their “walls” or sending private messages. There are not only spaces for the average user, but also for musicians and artists, which function as tools of their promotion. The British rock-band Arctic Monkeys was the first group to become famous mainly through their fans’ efforts on MySpace. Their followers wanted to get their favourite band’s music out there and launched a profile in 2004. So after a while the Arctic Monkeys did not only become one of the hottest band in the rock scene, but also the first ‘MySpace phenomenon’ (Wagemanns, 2007). A similar approach that was supposed to be even more ‘Do-it-yourself’ –she created a MySpace for herself - was used by the UK-based singer Lily Allen. Her song “Smile” became a summer-hit in 2006 and she got credit for being the next MySpace wonder – from zero friends and fans to about 500.000 today.

      The Arctic Monkeys -  I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

Both acts are supposed to only have become famous via the social network and by means of a substantial amount of self-promotion. The have taken a new route to fame, which does not follow the traditional patterns of artist discovery explained in the introduction A Star is born 2.0. Instead of being picked by the A&R representative of a label, they have promoted their music and themselves, obtained their own (rather extensive) circle of fans and could then be recruited by a record company. The Arctic Monkeys refused to go major whereas Lily Allen signed a deal with EMI. The marketing department was apparently not even necessary for their promotion, since the demand of the fans was there before any contractual agreements. It seems as if the artist’s possibility to practice self-marketing also provided an opportunity to them that meant fame beyond music business control and most important: More creative self-determination. Moreover, weblogs (blogs) and social networks on the web 2 are known to be a better indicator for popularity than traditional artist rankings (Dhar & Chang, 2007; Grace et al. 2007).

But how does a MySpace actually work? And is it really that easy to become famous in the Web 2.0? What role do the industry employees and the traditional media still play to get an artist to the top? And to what extent can those networks even account for the popularity of a musician? According to Louis Collard MySpace “represents a huge marketing opportunity for artists” (2007, p. 3). It is a marketing tool available at no cost and is open to already established artists as well as to those looking for the music consumers’ and labels’ attention. A typical musician’s MySpace profile contains a description of the band and some photos but most importantly a few songs that can be listened online by means of a stream. The artists  promote                                             Example of a MySpace page  - www.myspace.com/subdivineband
themselves through the adding of
‘friends’. Those can be any type of MySpace-users: fans, but also other bands. The more friends a band adds and the larger the friend-list is the more attention a profile will get. More and more users will add the artist in order to belong to this cluster of connections. As Collard explains “targeting consumers in this way in a medium they are comfortable and familiar with provides publicity at no real cost, a particular advantage for unsigned artists.” (2007, p. 3)

The questions of to what extent this is really an advantage and whether the amount of friends on MySpace can indicate the success of an artist was assessed through studies by Dhar & Chang (2007) and Grace et al. (2007). Dhar & Chang examined the effects of online Word of Mouth (WOM) in blogs and social networks on the sales of physical music products. According to them music is an ‘experience good’, which means that its quality cannot be determined without actually buying and consuming it. Recommendations from other sources are needed. Thus, they see the advantage of WOM online in its ability to provide recommendations to other users. Moreover, they researched whether the number of MySpace friends is related to the amount of CDs sold. Their results supported their hypothesis, showing that the volume of blog posts referring to a certain album correlates with the number of albums sold. For the friends on MySpace they found out that an increasing percentage is significant. These results clearly showed that online WOM helps to promote artists. However, their study also revealed that traditional media still play an important role in artist promotion and that being signed with a major label accounts for more popularity than having an independent-deal.

An IBM Research Report by Grace et al. (2007) took a closer look at a possible ranking of artists according to public comments made on specific musicians’ MySpace pages. They wanted to show that “popularity can now be determined by monitoring on-line public discussion, examining the volume and content of messages left for artists on their pages by fans and looking at what music is being requested, traded and sold in digital environments” (p.3). According to them, the comments left on MySpace artist pages are important since they are related to current events connected to the musician and their function as an expression of opinion. The result of their research proves the assumption that these comments are a better indicator for the popularity of an artist than other measurements, such as the charts. The ranking the researchers found out through the comments was preferred over the Billboard charts by people polled offline.

       Lilly Allen - Smile

These two studies show that the Web 2.0 and MySpace can indicate the success of an act, but do not rule out the influence of traditional media. Thus, they cannot account for the complete self-determination of artists in terms of their promotion either. The question whether MySpace is really self-marketing beyond music industry efforts remains unanswered. Especially after journalists revealed that some of the MySpace wonders – amongst others Lily Allen – had actually been contracted already before their appearance on the network (Borcholte, 2006). The MySpace hype and the dream of becoming a star overnight had been exploited by the music industry. Since the approach to pop music by Lily Allen was relatively extraordinary, mixing elements from various styles, the marketers at EMI used MySpace as a means to test the singer’s potential to success (Borcholte, 2006). Thus, an online social network as MySpace can have advantages for both: artists and record labels. On the one hand the Arctic Monkeys did really become famous through the platform and others bands could promote themselves extensively without being signed with a major label. On the other hand for the industry side it can be used to test popularity and to predict future music sales.

At the end of the day MySpace has already broken down the traditional patterns of A&R and music-marketing by given the artists a room to market themselves and the consumers to determine what they like by adding them. The music industry now has to adjust to this new trend online. However, as Keith Negus puts it “artistic careers are dependent on changing fashions and the contingencies of the commercial market” (Negus, 1997, p. 37). Thus, the ‘Do-it-yourself’ approach cannot be the ultimate guarantor of stardom.


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