While I no longer qualify for a young person’s railcard (surely the final limit!), I still feel able to point out what was already mentioned earlier in a link, the ‘Myspace Problem’.
The same people who’ve set up these apparently-unusable pages are also those who’ve grown up with HTML as second nature. Amazon and eBay are familiar to them, but the black-on-white principles somehow do not apply on Myspace. People are quite content with the system that exists now. Before you say it’s a bad system, I wonder what you say to all these people?
Given the tastes you mention, I think you would like many of the artists I linked to. If you’re doing something on the computer or in the computer room, you could always load the page up, then switch to another page/screen. I get lots of listening done that way. I don’t often stay on the page while I’m listening, unless I haven’t read what’s there yet.
Then again, I usually have tons of windows and programs open and I know that some people usually only do one thing at a time. I don’t know Apple but how I do it on my PC/Internet Explorer is to hold my cursor over a link, right click my mouse, then “Open In New Window” which leaves the page I’m originally on alone. I can do that to extremes though. I have truly found the limits of how many Internet Explorer and Firefox windows one can have open at the same time. That is, a LOT.
When it says download–that’s to my computer,right? So if the file or song or whatever is corrupt, I get screwed, right? (see how ignorant I am). I am leery to mess my new MacBook up–it is so nice and virus free.
I have iTunes, but haven’t done anything but load some of my CDs onto it. My music is stale at present–I feel like I’ve been listening to the same stuff for ages. I like Fountains of Wayne and the new Dixie Chick CD and I want the new Tony Bennett (with Sting and Billy Joel and Elton John etc).
maybe myspace could act as a trial listening booth? If I like an artist enough, I will purchase their stuff (don’t know enough about downloading music to not do so, plus it’s a bit dodgy to not).
Equi --you may have a myspace convert here! But I still deplore the ticky-tacky glittery shit…
<wonders where she will ever find time to do this>
That was unclear. I meant, you could listen to the music on some of the pages. MySpace’s Music pages are set to play the songs automatically when you first go to the page, by default. That annoys me when I go to other web pages, but since it’s expected on MySpace, it doesn’t bother me. There are settings that can be changed to disallow that (the music starting automatically) but either the band has to do it (and few do, since they want their music to be heard), or you’d have to have a MySpace account and check that setting in your preferences.
Personally, I like reading about people. I don’t like it when they get TOO personal, but most of the pages I go to don’t have that problem. I understand (to an extent) why people want to talk about themselves. We’re all nameless, faceless people, put on the earth for a brief speck of time, then forgotten forever except for some dusty pictures and the memories of people who knew us personally (and that’s gone as soon as they are). Many pople understand that they’re pretty much nothing, and putting up pictures and telling others that their favorite color is purple, and what their favorite movies are is a way to reach out and say “I exist.”
Obviously, too many people take it to the extreme with TMI. Unless it’s a sex worker’s site, I think WAY too many young girls bare too much on their pages. I don’t go to those kinds of pages, but I’ve seen them, mainly when I first got on MySpace. Employers are now looking for blogs and MySpace pages when hiring, and a lot of MySpacers and LiveJournalists Xangaists are getting and are going to get a nasty shock when they find that out the hard way.
But I don’t see anything wrong with telling a bit about yourself. Not that I do, really. I don’t say a whole lot about myself on my personal page. No one from my past could find me by my last name because I don’t use it on my own page. I could be found by other means, but no one I knew would go to the trouble. It’s all about balance and trying to be smart about the information given out
You don’t have to download the songs to hear them. Most aren’t downloadable anyway. Some artists allow it (I allow it on my artist’s page) but most don’t. If you really really like a song, check underneath the title and if the Download link is “hot” you can download it, otherwise it’ll be greyed out. You can’t get viruses from downloading MySpace songs. Don’t ever EVER click on any of the ads though, because that way lies potential nastiness.
I think you’re right about the balance. And for the most part, the “louder” pages are most likely the younger crowd–and all those kittens and hearts and Gumbies are to be expected. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh–we all want to be noticed and made much of, if even only for a bit. I was raised to be modest and to not call attention to myself, and it stuck. Nowadays, that doesn’t seem to be the case for alot of folks.
I get the bit about opening another window–I do it all the time, in Safari, it’s called opening a new file. How do I get the songs to play longer than 43 seconds? Do I have to join the site? All the songs I listened to were samples.
I hate tabbed browsing. I thought it was a good idea when I first installed Firefox, but then I found once too often that if Firefox freezes up (and it freezes up a LOT) I lose everything that was tabbed. I can’t even see what pages I had open. At least with IE I can see what pages I had open. I use both interchangably, and I never have more than 3-4 tabs going in Firefox.
A hundred?? Wow, that makes ME feel better! I’ve had upwards of 50 open at one time.
eleanorigby, the songs should play in their entierty. I wasn’t aware of any limit for non-members. What pages did that? Does that happen to anyone else out there?
Sometimes the bands will just put up snippets. I hate that and if I gave you a link for someone who did that, I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry.
My last (quite) long answer seems to have disappeared into the ether…
Eleanorigby, no idea about Safari, but there shouldn’t be a problem with listening to the whole track from the site.
A lot of the people I’ve found, apart from friend-of-friend situations, is through the music searches, especially the ‘influenced by’ option. Just don’t go for “pink floyd”, because 115,000 results aren’t easy to work through.
Except for the pictures, I don’t see it as being that much different from people posting here (and even here there are picture threads). Speaking up and saying something is saying “I’m here, and I have something to say.” Posting in IMHO and MPSIMS and Cafe Society giving opinions and telling people about your day and talking about what movies you like is not a lot different from posting blogs and filling up your Interests section. Unless you call attention to yourself, like using an avatar (the pictures you see up at the top left or in the Friends lists) of your boobs hanging out, which I don’t think you’d do, hardly as many people will go to your profile than read your posts here. No cites of course, but it makes sense to me. The people who see your profile will have gotten there, generally, via a mutual interest.
You don’t have to post blogs, but if you find someone whose blogs you like you can Subscribe to their blogs, to be notified the next time they post one. No one subscribes to my blogs, but then, I don’t really blog much. I wrote up a letter to someone about how I got to be a truck driver (this was years ago), which is a very strange story, and almost put it up as a blog on MySpace, but didn’t because, who cares? I almost posted it in MPSIMS but I’m not known there because I rarely post there and, who cares? So, it’s up to the individual how much they want to share with others.
GorillaMan, I hate when that happens. If I had all the time back that I spent typing that then got munched, I’d, well, have a lot of time. It’s even happened to me in this thread too. A couple of pages back Ed Squires (hi!) posted his page and I sent an add request from my artist’s page. I looked at his Friends list, and through them, found about 2 dozen new artists, a very eclectic mix. I wrote up the story ("…through that page I found an all-female Bluegass band (name, link) and through them I found an alt-country artist (name, link) and through her I found an electronica artist (name, link) and through them I found a Bulgarian theremin player (name, link) …") giving links and everything. I lost it when my computer crashed, and I never got around to writing it up again, because after awhile I forget who I found when and where I found who.
I think there’s something strange going on with the SDMB. Out in the menu, looking at the Subject Lines and last posts, I see you name as the last post in the thread, but when I look, my post previous to this one is the last post. I don’t know if your missing post is showing up as the last post, or if my last post is not showing up as the last post. Of course, if things are working correctly now, my name will show up as the last post, until someone else posts, or unless this post won’t show up but my last post shows up as a last post.
Like I said before, it’s not designed for people to look at; this is not its major function, and that’s why it succeeds in spite of looking atrocious. It has two major features that override its manifest visual horribleness, and these are:
It allows people to collect evidence of their “social” life (well, obviously), and
It allows artists to have easy previews of music, and individuals to share this without it being downloaded permanently.
These go hand in hand; artists are on MySpace both because of the nifty flash player, and because there are a squillion young to youngish types on their to whom they can market themselves. Many of the squillion youngish types are there because they can display how popular they are, and can blast out some of their music taste at anyone visiting their page*. I think this is why it’s won out so massively over other social networking sites; the benefits for musicians feed directly into the benefits for general users and vice versa, and neither of these things have anything to do with how it looks.
Basically, it can afford to look shit because it’s not about disseminating information, and its functional aspects are extremely simple. This isn’t necessarily a criticism, and quite possibly its basic nature is what’s allowed it to scale so quickly. But it still looks like shit.
I do realise this doesn’t encapsulate all reasons for using MySpace, but I do think they’re the two major reasons why it’s become so popular…
Um…it was every song I clicked on. I clicked on “play” and the lil bar goes to the right and when it gets to the end, the song ends–sometimes in mid-word.
Here are the ones I looked at (I may not have tried to listen to each artist’s song):
Jane Silberg
Bjork
Judi Tzuke
Imogene Heap
Piera Guli
Alice Peacock
Hooverphonic
Midnight Serenaders
Datri Bean
Cara Dillon
Puppini Sisters
Dixie Chicks
Others, like Neco something, I went into to see the semi-opaque effect mentioned. I didn’t listen.
So, it’s either my browser or I can’t navigate a web site (not completely out of the realm of possibility, but unlikely!)
Anyhoo, thanks again for the intro to all this new music–this list alone will keep me busy for some months. I go in spurts with music and movies–I don’t listen/watch and then suddenly I listen and watch almost obsessively and then I don’t again. Probably a psychiatric disorder of some kind.
Also, I think myspace is fundamentally different than this bb at least. The SDMB is more about ideas and debates and learing that anything else–there isn’t a whole lot of gossip or “chit-chat” going on. Sure, there are threads in CS or IMHO or MPSIM that are trivial, but not at People magazine trivial (ok, not always)–more like New Yorker trivial.
At least the humor and the conversation is more intellectual. I also don’t see alot of “here, let me [del]bore you to death[/del] tell you every last detail of my inner thought process”–or if it is here, it is better disguised.
I suppose it all comes down to comfort levels. If someone likes to tell all or share stuff, then myspace is a good way to do so. If someone wants to talk about Things–this is a better place to be. Like anything else, it is what you make it.
