Myspace Is Not Enough: BandCamp Aims at the Online (2/1 & 2/22)

All band folk who want to get noticed & play to bigger crowds & get reviewed & whatnot: a half-assed Myspace page is not enough.

As somebody who writes about this stuff quasi-professionally, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard/heard of a band, then tried to check out their site — on Myspace, these days — and found zero information. Bands seem to be taking the whole don’t-give-a-fuck pose to a ridiculous extreme, not even bothering to give the names of people in the damn band. Which, frankly, is idiotic. If I want to write about your band, I’m left either guessing what the hell you’re about, who plays what, and all the rest or pestering you personally for info.

Granted, the rise of Myspace has been handy in a couple of respects: I hardly ever have problems finding pictures of bands these days, and pretty much anybody can create a page, without a lot of hassle. But if the page itself doesn’t say a damn thing about you, what’s the point? Just sticking your band’s name and post-ironic labels of “Polka,” “Tejano,” & “Ghettotech” on a five-minute Myspace page does nada to help promote & publicize your music & what you do.

Got any albums out? Planning to put out an album? A 7″, maybe? Is your band playing sometime soon? Hell, from some band’s pages, I can’t tell, and I’m not even talking random bands I’ve never heard anything about, but good bands, bands I know and like. Too many bands stick a page up, make half-hearted stabs at updating it, and then ignore it from then on.

It’s nice to see I’m not the only person who thinks like this; those crazy/determined BandCamp folks are staging the next installment of their deal this coming weekend (Sun., February 1st), this time on the whole idea of “online presence”. Honcho (and all-round cool guy) Matthew Wettergreen will be running this one, including hands-on training on all things Web-related, options for selling music online, how to measure site traffic, and ideas for getting peole there. Check the site for detailed info.

The usual location for the BandCamp sessions — Caroline Collective, at 4820 Caroline. The session will run from 1-3PM, and as indicated by the flyer above, there’s a second, kinda-sorta-duplicate session scheduled, too, this one on Sun., February 22nd at the same place & time.

Should be good stuff, as always. I’m heartened to hear that people have attended the past few BandCamps, btw; the better the bands in this city get at promoting themselves and all the rest, the better it’ll be for everybody, raising the bar for all Houston musicians.