Tonymuggs here. I've been using Myspace as a marketing tool for the past four years building our fans through countless hours of friend requests.
More times than not, I got fans to say, "Wow. Thanks so much for finding me."
I averaged about 1,000 friends or more a month.
About six months ago, Myspace made it much easier to 'friend request' and thus, making my job much less time consuming to market my band free of charge.
All it took was my diligence and patience and hard work. I would sit at my PC for hours 'friend requesting' fans of like minded bands.
Two months ago, my Friends total number (83,880)stopped dead in their tracks, frozen, some days even losing friends to my account.
I contacted Myspace and have been blown off.
My theory is Myspace has flagged my account as a 'Spammer' and my 'friend requests' either get eliminated or put into 'junk' where most people just delete it.
Around the same time as my account froze(with respect to friend requests), Myspace added Artist Dashboard, where now you can to pay for marketing. This would appear to be a good thing for bands.
BUT.......If you don't want to pay, most bands are broke S.O.B.s, then what?
I had a discussion with a friend about this subject and he thinks Facebook will have to be the next Myspace where bands can grassroots their name and music for free until the economy turns around and the music industry irons out a way to earn money and sign bands.
I should add that this is only my theory. However, the timing of my account being idle for the past two months(even though I've been adding friends daily) and the Artist Dashboard starting up at the same time seems all too familiar and all too depressing.