Myspace put social media on the map. It was so important for artists, providing a new way to connect directly with fans, and fans a new way to access music. It was easy for many artists to invest all their time and marketing efforts into Myspace because of all of the hype and amount of users. It was easy to track plays and gauge the popularity of your band. But it’s clear that you can not put all of your time into social media; you need to be able to control your online presence by maintaining a website and using this as your home base.

Direct Fans to Your Website

Your home base is where you direct all of your traffic. This needs to be your website.

Much like social media, actively contributing content to your website including videos, tracks, blog posts, interviews, etc, you’ll earn the trust of new followers. The difference is you can control your website because you own the domain. Not only can you customize it the way you need, unlike social media sites, you won’t be at the mercy of social networks once the fad is over.

This way, when social networks fade, like Myspace, you’ll be able to protect your web presence and won’t be hit by declines in traffic to that social network. Not like Facebook or Twitter are going anywhere soon, but at one point we all thought the same about Myspace and that its reign would never end. Well, it has.

Myspace still commands a huge 27M unique monthly user base, but check out this sad, sad graph. Just like CD declines, there is no bottom in site for Myspace.

Due to the amount of links Myspace has acquired over the years, Myspace will continue to rank for your artists name in the search results. Myspace commands an incredible 6.10M links. Links can represent up to 44% of the reason that a site will outrank another. Many artists had directed all of their new fans to their Myspace page which helped tally more and more links, but these should have gone toward their individual webpages.

Social media is important for artist development and growing your fan base. Don’t get me wrong, artists NEED to continue connecting with fans on social media, but it shouldn’t be your home base, even though SM is fun, too.

Artists, get credit for your hard work and own / actively contribute to your website.