Longing for the day ...

Myspace has very little to do with it ...

The other day I read this interview with Ingrid Michaelson, which is billed as revealing how MySpace can help musos "make it" on the same scale as Ingrid has. Since I found the article via Myspace For Musicians, I think it's a pretty safe bet to portray the interview as a MySpace booster.

First, some context: who is Ingrid Michaelson? She's a New Yorker indie folk singer with an interesting line in sparse, breathy songs. Apparently, she's had her music played in episodes of Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Since I can't recall ever sitting through a single episode of either, I can't recall any of her songs (I listened to the Grey's one on MySpace but didn't recognise it), but obviously lots of people do and can.

She's had nearly 10 million views on her MySpace page and each song has over a million plays - that's impressive. She tours the US with her band and plays with an impressive list of performers. It's safe to say she has a musical life that most of us would aspire to ...

But there's a disconnect in the article about MySpace's role that many people would overlook - and that annoys me. Here's her description of what happened:

I came across the artist profile of a [now] friend of mine named William Fitzsimmons. He's had a pretty good MySpace following. From the beginning, he's held steady. He put me in his “Top 8” [friends], and he wrote a whole thing about me, like “Check this girl out — she's great.” And a music supervisor found me through him. That's how I got Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Now it's snowballing. So I find that aligning yourself with great artists helps, because that [music supervisor] would never have found me if I wasn't on William's page.

Spot it? It's the last sentence. William Fitzsimmons has more than 39,000 friends and 20 of them are on his top friends list - but there's only one Ingrid Michaelson. In other words, if this MySpace thing is so important, why didn't it work for the other people in the same situation? That's simple cause-and-effect analysis ...

I'd bet there are two much more important things going on here. The first is that William Fitzsimmons talked her up. That's just good old-fashioned networking and (presumably mutual) support - I'd have no idea about William if she hadn't mentioned him in the interview. In other words, it's the relationship that was really valuable to her, not the software that enabled it.

Second, the reason William Fitzsimmons talked her up is because her music was interesting and good. Different enough to be memorable but still fitting the criteria for mass appeal - not so different as to be alienating. Finding that balance is a very hard thing to do and getting that good at it takes dedication and application. Ingrid would probably have come to a lot of attention no matter what she'd done - persistent work on growing her career would have taken her a lot of places without MySpace ...

Finally, it helps to have a song that uses words appropriate to the TV show, and it helps to already have a reputation for being easy to work with, approachable, etc. Also, there's a momentum effect to this sort of thing, which she calls "snowballing". Once you've got the reputation and contacts, it's easier to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Getting there much harder that being there ...

Of course, that's not to say that having a MySpace presence isn't important for indies - it's essential. But don't make the mistake of thinking that MySpace will do the work for you, or that having a MySpace presence is all it takes. And don't fall into the trap of spending so much time on your MySpace promotions that you neglect the effort to create memorable-but-not-alienating music. Oh, and Ingrid's advice about pimping your MySpace page is good - as is her practice of not automatically playing her damn songs when the page loads. I hate that!

What shits me is that MySpace gets all the attention and credit for Ingrid's success when in reality it's her hard work and savvy relationship-building that really did the work. Why does this happen? Well, MySpace is owned by a global media empire, each part of which works to boost each other part. When you have that kind of support, lots of other people will act to be on-side rather than ask too many tough questions.

MySpace makes its own reality ...