an analyzation and railing against "myspace bands"

Urban Dictionary definition of "Myspace Band":

1.	Myspace Band
	1. A band whose popularity comes from their popularity on myspace.com, thus lacking any REAL credibility in today's music scene. This lack of credibility comes from the simplicity through which their popularity is achieved: record songs with decent sound quality, take some pictures of yourself, and add as many friends as possible. This formula thus saturates the music scene with hundreds of thousands of bands that will never make it. Those that do, will have no lasting value. These bands typically will eventually replaced by a newer, more hip, band (See also: flavor of the week). 2. A band followed typically by only the "myspace generation" Myspacer1: "Brah, I'm telling you,(insert name of current flavor of the week band here) will be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame one day." LogicalGuy: "That myspace band, or any other myspace band for that matter, will ever be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame"

Last night I went out with some friends to more or less finally see a band that we all talk a lot of smack about...basically to give them a fair chance.

What I encountered was more than disturbing, so please brace yourselves:

For starters, I am in a band myself. We love playing music, and we try everything we can to be genuine and not fake anything. That being said, we have to rely on myspace to get our music out to people, as do hundreds and thousands of both famous and local (such as we are) bands.

If you have not frequented myspace for a while, good for you. Lord knows I deleted my personal account years ago and even the band one doesn't see too much action. That being said, for those of you who are unfamiliar how a myspace band page works: you have a player with your songs on it, and the number of times your songs have been played next to each title. At the bottom of the player it lists the number of total plays you have. In the middle of your page is also your friend count, or, how many other myspace profiles are linked to yours.

Generally these two numbers can be used to gage how popular a band is. Well...no, not anymore.

For instance: We have 2646 "myspace friends" (saying myspace so much makes me cringe I feel like a 16 year old girl), and 14,000ish total plays of our songs.

The band I am ranting about has: OVER 1,000,000 total plays of their songs, along with OVER 31,000 myspace friends, along with over 12,000 comments on their page (TKB has about 400?).

So anyways, my friends and I went to check out this band that has played in the area a fair number of times, easily more than TKB has. So seeing these numbers, I am expecting at least 100-200 swooped hair teen-emo kids. We get there, they start playing. There are 4 kids that came to see them. Let me say that number again. 4 kids. 4 kids who were actually watching the band (sitting down @ a table, mind you).

To start bring this together, let's go over the facts:

BAND A (the one I'm ranting about)

friends: +31,000

comments: +12,000

plays: +1,000,000

kids at their show actually watching: 4

I haven't taken a math class since senior year in high school, but to me, those numbers simply do not add up.

BUT WAIT. Here is the catch. Unknowingly to a lot of younger kids who do not have bands (1/4 kids on myspace?), there are "bots". Bots are simply this: kids (or programs) that enable you to have hundreds and thousands of plays per pay (or per song), along with comments and friends. A tell tail sign that a band is using a bot is one of two ways:

1. Scroll through their comments and see how many are actually from kids. Better yet, kids that commented the band before the band spammed them with "Hey we're The LollyPop Gang and we have a new record out! Check us out and tell your friends!". Also note how many of the comments are more band spammers/general spam.

2. Their myspace player lists 1,000,000 total plays, the band has had a myspace for less than 2 years, and their actually DAILY play count is 9.

A main point of doing this, is so when said myspace band spams a record label with their crappy music and press kit and myspace link via email, the band thinks "Oh, the record label will see our myspace page and all our friends and comments and plays and sweet hair cuts and outfits that they'll just HAVE to sign us! I mean, we are SO LEGIT!".

Unfortunately for all these bands, record labels are NOT as dumb as the myspace band is, and are more than aware of their bullcrap tactics.

Whereas if you check out some up and coming bands I really dig, such as All Get Out and All the Day Holiday, you will not find millions of (fake) plays, millions of (fake) friends, or millions of (spam) comments. What you will find if you go to their myspace is music. Real. Genuine. Music.

And THAT is why THEY are on legit labels, and do all the sweet things that they do. Because they actually give a crap about music, and not about myspace.

I think if bands started to care more about making music that is genuine, and stopped worrying about their online image, it would be right around the same time hell would freeze over.

The lesson: bands can fake the number of friends, plays, and comments all they want, but the number of people at your show, and the number of kids that are actually into it, does not lie. At all.