How to save MySpace

Both TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider posted stories this week about how MySpace is in big trouble. Traffic's down, users aren't spending much time at the site, Google hates its current ad deal that's up for renewal this year, and the relatively new CEOs are apparently planning to lay off up to 50 percent of the company--another 750 people--to save the company.

What happened? I remember when MySpace was the site of choice for musicians and music fans to keep track of their local scenes, and it seemed to have a pretty strong lock on general-purpose social networking until Facebook came along. Now, it looks like one big electronic billboard, and the only people who care about it are band managers and publicists trying to get "adds" for their artists so they can sell these acts up the chain to club bookers, radio stations, and record labels. There was always a commercial aspect to MySpace, but it's overshadowed everything else: Fox Interactive seems to have killed the goose that laid the golden egg, and covered its corpse with blinking Christmas lights spelling the name of the latest disposable major label act.

I exaggerate, but not much. If MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta wants to save the business, here are several steps he should take as soon as possible.

Get back to your core mission. What am I supposed to do at MySpace? I know what I used to do--I used to follow bands to find out when they were playing in my area, and perhaps exchange messages with them. As a musician, I used it to communicate with other local bands and fans and to post gig listings. Simple.

One of many areas that needs improvement.

(Credit: MySpace)

I don't understand how MySpace Music, which lets you watch videos and play songs from bands of all sizes and popularity levels, ties back to this initial vision. Why should I go to MySpace to hear this stuff? How does it tie back with my friends? How does it tie back with local and famous artists I'm following?

Solution: Get rid of MySpace Music as a separate site. Let any artist with a musician's page make their music available to all users in exactly the same way--users run a search, visit the musician's site, and add any content on that site to a playlist that they can post on their own site. Any user can ask any musician to become his friend. And so on. Forget the distinction--it's all music. Which gets me to my next point...

If you're going to offer free music, do it right. As I wrote Thursday, a couple years ago, free online streaming music was hard to find; now, it's commonplace. So let's try using MySpace Music to add some Led Zeppelin songs to my profile page. Nope--the first result is a promotional page for the band's 18-month-old "Mothership" compilation, and the rest of the results are various cover bands.

OK, what about Pink Floyd's "One of These Days"? Once I scroll past the sponsored listings that take up most of the page, the first result is a MySpace home page for a Pink Floyd cover band. Eventually there are some listings that appear to be the song I wanted, but by this time I've pretty much given up and decided that I'll be using Grooveshark or Imeem or any of the other countless competitors that give me the song I want, on demand, right away.

Solution: figure out how your competitors got those deals with the majors, and sign the same deals.

Fix your advertising. Online advertising pays for all the free content (including this blog--hooray!) that we're accustomed to getting, so I'm all in favor of reasonable and relevant ads. But MySpace has littered its most important pages with intrusive and annoying advertisements. My personal home page has two big graphical advertisements for Bank of America, plus graphical plugs for a game by Zynga, a MySpace Karaoke site, and sponsored listings for a concrete company. Admittedly, there hasn't been much action on my page for MySpace to use to target ads, but even when I visit other musicians' profile pages--the main reason I use the site--I'm bombarded by graphical banner ads for low-value products I have no interest in, like mortgage refinancing and online education classes. When I search for a particular song on MySpace Music and the top two-thirds of the page--nearly everything above the fold--is devoted to sponsored links and annoying video ads.

Contrast that with Facebook, where the ads on the most popular pages (home and profile pages) are limited to a clearly labeled right-hand column and are sometimes surprisingly relevant. One relative, a big Jerry Seinfeld fan, didn't know he was coming to her town until she saw an ad on her Facebook page. She actually bought a ticket through the site! I'm willing to bet that hardly ever happens on MySpace.

Solution: devote less space to advertising, eliminate the super-annoying blinking flashing banner ads, and do a better job of optimizing advertisements to individual users.

Fix search. It's better than it used to be, but it's still not very tolerant--unless you enter the exact band name, you might get a lot of irrelevant results. When I look for one of my favorite new Seattle bands, The Curious Mystery, I have to enter the "The" or it won't find them. If I search for one of the bands I used to play with, Half Light, I must enter it exactly: I can't enter "Half Light Seattle" even though that's the exact spelling of their unique MySpace URL (there was another Half Light when we tried to get that space).

Solution: wasn't that Google deal supposed to be about more than advertising? Maybe your next one can include some technology transfer as well.

Let the geeks run the company. One of the most interesting things going on at MySpace right now is the development platform: I'm seeing more digital start-ups who are essentially using MySpace like the Windows of online music, tapping into the functionality and social networking connections that have already been established there, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. This shows promise: build the ecosystem of apps, and users will have to keep coming back.

Solution: I don't know how MySpace is organized today, so I can't get too detailed here, but put the people with technical chops in charge, and don't let the marketers, ad salespeople, and record-industry business development folks run the show.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

[Gonzie]

Is it worth saving though? Its a real pig of a social site, messy ugly and fracking annoying (seriously how many times have I got to tell it "don't play music automatically")

[loose_screw]

Let it die, just like the way Friendster hit the dirt. They don't want to evolve and respond to user criticisms, then they should go extinct.

[Don Key]

I agree. It took them way too long to evolve where for the last few years every page looked like it was made by a 12 year old with ADD. It's too late to save it, they got fat and lazy and they deserve to be "friendstered"

[pase121]

Mr. Murdoch prematurely ended a fad...good riddance.

[tacit]

I stopped using MySpace when spammers started hosting spam pages on MySpace and then burying me in avalanches of spam emails advertising the MySpace pages. Repeated complaints eventually resulted in an email from MySpace stating that MySpace's official policy is to take no action against people who use spam to advertise MySpace pages.

[dzankizakon]

I don't think anyone will shed a tear when MySpace is shut down, its domain sold for $4.20 to a homeless drifter and its logo banned in 17 states. Cheers to that.

[funkyboot]

All of the suggestions in this article would benefit Myspace greatly, too bad it'll never happen (or they won't start to happen until it's too late).

May I add two more:

1. Make it easy for musicians to allow visitors to download songs. It used to be as simple as, I upload a song, I select that I want users to be able to download it, and they'd have that option right from the player. Now when I upload a song and select that I want visitors to be able to download it, there's nowhere for them to actually download the song.

Solution: Bring back downloading from the music player.

2. Improve the streaming/fidelity of the music player. The audio fidelity on the Myspace Music Player still sucks. That's unacceptable in this day and age. If I upload one of my MP3's to Myspace, I expect it to playback at or near the same quality of the source MP3.

[latitude9]

What a collection of whining crybabies with the gimmie, gimmie free attitude. Myspace Music has evolved into a network for professionals. For those who need yet another social networking site, if you don't like the basic Myspace, go someplace else. Or here's a thought, instead of spending all your time sitting in front of a computer screen complaining about what active entrepreneurs are contributing to society, make one yourself. Create your own site, a good name might be Cryspace, a place where visitors can download whatever you have done in your life to earn a living free.

[monkeyfun14]

Problem with social networking sites is that there can only be one dominant one at a time because they can not interwork with each other.

If someone notices that their friends only go on facebook then chances are they will slowly go on facebook more and more and then it becomes a chain reaction.

If somehow they could set it up to allow messaging across myspace and facebook then this issue wouldn't exist.

[ofmyony]

I had a friend say that MySpace is huge and nothing will take its place. We'll its happened, it's not a surprise to me, I am glad others see it for what it has become, anti-social.

I think a few users did in the site. The site became the anti-social site. Post all your negativity all your outrageous views. I mean in the end people want good in their lives. If a site becomes a vehicle of outrage and rebellion it will not appeal to a large portion of the audience and users will eventually leave.

The tragedy, MySpace was a place for individuals and groups to showcase their music and interest. What happened is that it got ugly. People wanted to get hooked-up and were posting outrageous photos and views, It just became unsanitary and sickening. Unfortunately there are people who like to be anti-social therefore chasing off the social majority. MySpace will never regain the excitement and opportunities it once offered it's users, a tragedy for sure.

[karpenterskids]

Very thorough article---good job!

As a person who uses social networking to do all three things (connect with friends, reach out as an artist, and reach out as a listener), here's what I have to say about the site:

1. As a consumer, Myspace ads have slowlyyy gotten better, but Facebook still blows them away in this area. I remember when the only ads I'd ever see were for "which celebrity is this baby photo from?" or "which jonas brother is your favorite?".

2. As a listener, Myspace music has actually convinced me to switch from using Playlist.com (which was PERFECT, but with a sadly limited selection of artists) to using Myspace music, which has every single song I've wanted to hear so far. The only downside is that it's much harder to create a playlist than on Project Playlist, and it's cumbersome to do a search for a band, go to the band's page, then click on "albums" to find the song you want, instead of just searching for it directly like in Project Playlist. (or am I just using it wrong? idk, but that's been my experience so far)

3. As an artist, Myspace is quickly losing its appeal for me. Bands use social networking as a place where they can reach everybody, at any time...all the time. Since a LOT of people have left Myspace for Facebook, Facebook automatically starts looking like a better place to grow a fanbase, since people are spending more time there now.

In Myspace's favor, though...I must admit...having the ability to link a cell phone number to your account, and not getting a single captcha ever again is BEAUTIFUL. People shouldn't be bugged every four messages/comments to prove that they're not a robot. Why did it take Myspace years and years to figure that out, though?

*end of rant*

[atish505]

MySpace what ..?

[Brons2]

It's easy to disinfect the ads from MySpace using AdBlockPlus for Mozilla Firefox, they have a myspace cleanup definition list you can load into it. It really works great! http://easylist.adblockplus.org/

But yeah...I don't use it that much anymore either. Facebook is better.

Ironically one of the options for leaving comments on this article was to log in with your Facebook profile...

[songseeds2]

"...give me the song I want, on demand, right away."

This kind of attitude is killing everything EXCEPT corporate music. They will be the only ones who can negotiate big sweetheart deals to continue receiving revenues based on things OTHER THAN SALES.

As a musician, here's what I think. Give me a place to live, right away. I want oceanfront too, none of this simulated stuff. Give me food to eat, right now. Give me free musical instruments and all the accessories I need. Oh yes, I'll need a free vehicle and free fuel to transport all the musical equipment to gigs (which incidentally don't pay anymore). And how about a staff of people to work for free to promote my music and setup my gear. Recording studios and engineers who are willing to work for free to record my new songs too. Probably should toss in a VISA card that society pays for to cover the things I've left out. OK, that's about what you should figure on forking over if you want a future where everyone in the music and recording business works for free so you can have the downloads you want. ON DEMAND. RIGHT AWAY! FREE.

If you want to listen to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd go and BUY IT. It's copywritten material. Hundreds of people probably worked on it and if you really like it, don't they deserve to earn some compensation from you?

mySpace music will die because once every musician who dreams of making a living has the momentary high of seeing their name on the web and then realizes that its just free downloads and so-called "fans" who want MORE free downloads, they will lose interest. There is a hopeful musician bubble that is going to burst. When it does there will be nothing left BUT big corporate music companies.

[12three_s]

musician boyy, yah can't get music free on myspace. unless you enable it too, which of course you wouldn't do.. you'd be losing money. you can put it on your profile... which guess what? it gets YOUR name out. people listen to your music & make up their mind about you. if you have a prob with free downloads take it up with limewire. everyone at my high school & at my old middle school had/has it. they're all very surprised when they find out all tha music on my ipod has been bought when hey, that album is up on limewire! 100% free.

MySpace is communication / advertising / & something to do when your bored out of your mind. most of the time it's just a FUN way to meet/keep/talk to friends & have an individula profile that's just you. & since my generation NEEDS everything to be entertainment, FaceBook is out of question. I made one & geez. I got of that site in about 2 minutes. MySpace is a place where everything is all there. Crappy quality or not. We're normally to lazy to go to different websites for everything ANYWAYS. Get over it, we're teenagers.