thislooksfamiliar

the situation
a few days ago i was on myspace looking at bands. i often go to the pages of bands that i like and look through their friends/influences/touring partners to discover new music. i usually play the first few tracks on a band’s page while i browse their site and open the pages of potential new bands in other tabs. as happens from time to time, one of the pages i opened auto-loaded a song.

the problem
i like to be in control of what i’m listening to and i really didn’t like the song that auto-loaded so i started jumping through my opened tabs to find from where the auto-loaded song was playing.

the solution
i opened all of my tabs and glanced at the myspace music player in each. none of the roughly ten myspace tabs that i had open were playing music from the myspace music player. i figured that one of the bands must have music loaded the same way some personal myspace pages do, with a small media player embedded in the “about me” or “interests” section. so i looked through all ten tabs again, but found nothing. i then started going through all of the tabs AGAIN, this time looking at the comments, as people sometimes embed those same media players in their comments. eventually, after scrolling through all of the comments in about six of the tabs, i came across what i was looking for: an embedded media player in a comment that was playing music created by the person who left the comment. i clicked the pause button on the player, and was redirected to that artist’s myspace page. i thought i must have missed the pause button and accidentally clicked the artist’s name, so i hit the back button on my browser. this time, i made sure to click on the pause button, and once again was redirected to the artist’s myspace page. i really wanted to check out the band who page had the auto-loading song comment, so i hit the back button on my browser AGAIN. this time, i right clicked on the pause button in hopes of activating the pause function of the embedded media player and opening the artist’s myspace page in a new tab at the same time. unfortunately, the embedded media player was flash-based and i couldn’t right click on it. i eventually just gave up and left the page.

the lessons

• as a musical artist, don’t put auto-loading songs embedded in your comments on other band’s pages. i know it’s tempting because you’re forcing fans of bands of similar musical styles to yours to listen to your music, but it makes you look like a douchebag. you’ll have an impossible time trying to build your band’s brand if everyone thinks you’re a douchebag.
• as a band with a myspace page, it is your responsibility to police the comments on your myspace page. i know this can be a tedious task, but it is an important one. if you don’t want to lost potential paying customers the same way that band lost me, you need to do this. there are two major ways the band that i never heard could have proactively acted to alleviate my problem:
  • they could have limited the amount of comments listed on their front page. this achieves two things:
    • i would have needed to look through less comments before finding the one that was auto-playing
    • any comments that are auto-playing will quickly be pushed off the front page by newer comments
  • they could have screened comments before they are posted and rejected any that had embedded media. by not doing this, you are literally allowing other bands to hijack the audio portion of your myspace real estate.

the conclusion
as a result of a musical “artist” putting an auto-loading song embedded in a comment, a band potentially lost a paying customer. i won’t check back on that myspace page because, frankly, i don’t even remember the band’s name. there are thousands upon thousands of bands on myspace and none can afford to allow potential paying customers to navigate away from their myspace page without even hearing their music because another band will come along and gladly take that customer’s money.