this note may only appeal to those who are interested at all in marketing, and specifically marketing music...

anytime you see "vs." between two entities, you know that the subject matter almost certainly stems from our apparently innate desire to pit things against each other in some kind of war game of north american pop culture hierarchy. the uselessness of this is such that most of the time, this mentality of competition is often counterproductive if the goal is to obtain useful knowledge and use it to your advantage.

my own theory on marketing within the entertainment industry is that it is in our best interest to first identify our target audience and appropriate mediums (and I don't mean mystics who commune with the deceased) for marketing to that niche group. our second step is to focus on the mediums we deem to be most effective for carrying out said task, while exhausting all avenues which may assist us in building that target audience. both facebook and myspace can be useful networking tools for doing so, if used effectively.

the argument I've recently heard about myspace from the "die, myspace, die" camp is that "it's a waste of time because you're only dealing with people you don't know." this is an interesting perspective which overlooks a couple of key factors: (1) myspace is a tool for networking with music fans both familiar and unfamiliar and (2) if you only market to your friends, your fanbase largely remains stagnant and you restrict yourself from tapping into a very large and potentially success-generating market that I like to call...STRANGERS!

I'm the first to profess that at the independent level, we rely on our friends and family to support our careers and keep them afloat by attending our shows and buying our albums.  But you can call those people up on the phone and invite them to come out to a show. The whole idea behind sending out a press release, for example, is to expose your art to people who are not already familiar with it.

there are advantages and disadvantages to both myspace and facebook. the privacy policy on facebook allows you to be more selective about who you communicate with online. facebook is more of a social tool, while myspace (for musicians) is more of a marketing tool, and so the music (at this point in time) is more of a priority on myspace and less of a priority (although growing) on facebook.  Facebook, in general, is currently more popular...which brings us to an important point: there exists a "die, myspace, die" camp only because facebook is currently peaking in popularity, the same way myspace did a few years ago. and in 2 or 3 years, the cycle will turn over again, and the popularity of facebook will be replaced by the popularity of some other online addiction which will have a name like elbowRoom.com or bleedingNose.com.

J.