Being in a band, your time is very important. If you are an indie musician your day-to-day can possibly consist of a day job or school, then you need to make time for songwriting, recording, Myspace-ing, Tweeting, booking shows, editing video and fending off e-mails and other online networks. Knowing that your time is important, it is easy to brush off the fans, especially the ones that you do not see everyday, week, month, year or even, ever. That does not mean that they are not important.

Now more than even your fans are vital to your success. They are the ones that dictate your income. You NEED to keep them happy. There is no excuse, no communication gaps or barriers stopping you from developing relationships with every fan that wants one.

(more…)

Old School Marketing

My experience of marketing my music was started back in the late 80s I guess when my idea of ‘marketing’ was spending time stuffing envelopes full of cassette demos and posting them off to indie radio shows in the UK, major record labels, venues and indie fanzines.

Out of a mail out of around fifty tapes (yes tapes!) we got three positive responses. One was a phone call from Steve Lamacq (now at BBC Radio 1) who was helping out at Radio London at the time on the Gary Crowley Demo Clash show. We were being played on air in London as part of the demo clash show, which we were winning too. The DJs would play four new bands, the listeners would phone in and vote for their favorite.

As a result of that airplay we had some major label interest and a London showcase gig. Nothing came of that band (the archive is on MySpace though) though it was fuel enough for me to pursue other musical ventures with some commercial success in the UK some time later.

I’d managed to blag my way into some free studio time at a small studio in London by doing some work as a label runner and promoter and as a result we’d secured a P&D deal with a distributor. An unknown artist presenting a new track on a pristine piece of 12 inch vinyl drew more attention than the old method of the cassette tape and it eventually lead to a deal with a Warner’s sub-label.

Welcome To The New School

Killer marketing tactics will only get you so far but if the music isn’t up to scratch all the effort and money in the world is ultimately going to lead to failure. Get the song right and the breakthrough will eventually take care of itself.

Having said that you can help yourself make some noise using the tools available online today. And being a bit clever about it to set yourself apart from the herd.

One of the things I did that helped re-launched my music was to offer up various parts (vocals, hook, Midi file) of two of my tracks for remix. Its nothing new nowadays, in fact its positively de-rigueur. You can offer parts of your tracks up for download on your own site and MySpace or even newer web communities like MixMatchMusic.

With DIY remix culture exploding and related software becoming more powerful and affordable, sonic manipulators are growing hungry for disassembled pop music, and the music industry is beginning to see the benefit of increased exposure through releasing remix stems directly to the public.

Release a limited edition vinyl single. Its going to cost you around $900 for 500 7 inch singles but the prestige that would add to your release would be invaluable. Since the rise of Napster and, later, iTunes, a market for single songs has been reborn, and one of the unintended benefactors has been the seven-inch. Even Sub Pop Records’ famous singles club has been reactivated.

Singles are also highly collectible. “The punk and indie-rock undergrounds have always been particularly fond of the seven-inch as a badge of fanhood, something doled out in limited quantities and often specific circumstances – on certain tour dates or on labels available only in a certain region.” (from the Toronto Star)

A DJing contact of mine came up with an excellent idea for sending out DJ mixes of his in an effort to get club bookings (if you haven’t released a 12 inch single that’s kicked up some dust!). Rather than do the usual task of sending out CDs he spent something like $200 on iPod Shuffle’s, put his mix on there and sent them out to promoters. It got an immediate reaction just for the original way he presented himself. He also happened to be a great DJ which helped too of course but the bookings he got back as a result paid for the outlay.

Makeamixa do some great looking cassette USB drives which would be great as limited edition albums or to do a cheaper version of the above DJ tactic.

Other Music Marketing Tipsters

Digital distributor Tunecore have these tips to help you promote your release once you get it placed on iTunes and other major distributors. They’re also doing video distribution nowadays too. They also have a bunch of free PDF marketing guides.

Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies give some useful insight with How Can I Sell My Music Online? “There are variations on this theme, but essentially it boils down to this very simple question: now that there’s this internet thing, where’s the money and how do I get at it? What’s the best way to sell music online?”

Tom Robinson explains the answer to the questions, Should I Put My Future Hit On MySpace? and Does Your Music Have Value? on his excellent blog.”The more seriously artists treats their own work the more seriously other people will take it. A series of full commercial releases gives you a better chance of airplay at radio. It also gives you a discography.”

Max Lowe writes, 7 Tips To Writing A Crowd Drawing MySpace Blog, “You must write frequently and often for more than one reason. First, the search engines will pick up your blog quicker and more often if you post every day or two. Second, your readers will return more often if they know there is going to be new content every day.

And I couldn’t write this without mentioning something from CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, in particular his much quoted (worth another mention here), Derek Sivers 7 Rules Of Marketing. “Stop thinking of it as Marketing and start thinking of it as creative ways to be considerate. Think of things from the other person’s point of view”.

We’ll have part two later this week. Ideas and suggestions please leave comments!

Related Links

Steve Lamacq (Lamacq Central) MySpace
Tunecore Music Survival Guides (Tunecore.com)
Tips For Playing SXSW (Tom Robinson, MySpace blog)
How To Send CDs To Radio (TomRobinson.com)
BBC-One Music How To..Fat Guides (BBC Radio 1)
30+ Essential Music Industry Resources And Links (Buzzsonic.com)
Should I Put My Future Hit On MySpace? (TomRobinson.com)
XFM Uploaded (XFM Radio)
Radiohead Remix (RadioheadRemix.com)
Remix Culture Is Exploding (Evolving Music)
The Mash Up Revolution (Salon.com)
Record Label Resource (RecordLabelResource.com)
How To Get Your Music Distributed On iTunes (And Keep Most Of The Money) (Buzzsonic.com)
Vinyl 45s Make A Come Back (TheStar.com)
Facebook Music Marketing Tactics (NotEvilMusic.com)

This is ‘See Me (I Cant See You)’, the latest track from Anniversary Circle and the best thing they’ve done so far. Main songwriter and guitarist Martin Johnson was in a band with me called the Fruit Eating Bears years ago. Our main claim to fame was winning Gary Crowley’s Demo Clash show on BBC Radio London and supporting Divine Comedy at the legendary Bull and Gate in London’s Kentish Town.

Anyway, the track is a cross between late 80s UK goth (circa Banshees) and low-fi new wave, for want of a better description. There’s a fantastic dirty bassline wandering around in there too which brings to mind classic JJ Burnel in his Stranglers heyday.

There’s more music on the bands blog, the choice of which is ‘Winters Children’ and you can grab the MP3 here.

Anniversary Circle
(MySpace)

OK then, its nothing short of amazing that today, theoretically you can have your music on sale, worldwide in one of the biggest music retailers stores on the planet. Without a tour, without a manager and even without a record deal. You can be based in Brighton, UK (for instance) and someone in Alaska or Australia or Russia or wherever can download your music without leaving the house. You don’t have to leave the house to get in on sale either.

Also, if you signed up with a good distributor, you’ll be keeping around 75% of the retail price too.

I must admit, when I first saw my music on sale on the iTunes store it was exciting as it was another ‘career’ landmark for me. Still, as music career landmarks go it really was no comparison to the day I walked into the Virgin megastore on Oxford Street, London, the day of its original release in 1996 when the original version of the 99th Floor Elevators ‘I’ll Be There’, went on sale.

There it was, prominently displayed in a rack with all the other big 12 inch releases of the week. And there it was in the big HMV just up the road too. More importantly to me, there it was in stock and in the top 10 buzz chart in Trax Records in Soho, ten minutes walk away from the glare of the west end. A few days later ‘I’ll Be There’ had gatecrashed the national pop charts.

I used to spend a lot of money in dance music specialist Trax back in the days in the late 80s when I had to travel 160 miles by coach from my home in South Yorkshire, UK to seek out those elusive Euro imports and Belgian New Beat gems that only Trax had.

And there is the point of this article. In a world where you don’t even have to leave the house to get the latest 12 inch remix or latest indie release or even pay for music anymore, how do you as an artist make a difference when everybody is a digital record label and everybody can sit next to Elton on the virtual record shelf?

“Further hinting at physical music format’s dismal future, a new study shows 48 percent of U.S. teens did not buy a single CD last year. This means not ‘Graduation’, not ‘Kala’ and not even anything from that Soulja Boy guy. It means literally not a single one.” Brock Thiessen from the Exclaim.ca article, ‘Teens Not Buying CDs Anymore?’

“I think the time is not too far off where some releases come out on vinyl and MP3 only — no CD. But who knows.” Josh Maddel, Other Music on Wired.com, Jan 2007

If you’ve more than a just passing interest in the state of the music industry you may have noticed a recent surge of interest and press on the apparent vinyl revival. Recently a representative from Sony BMG, mentioned that his parent company is working on releasing its entire back catalog on vinyl. Even Warners interest in the format has been revived.

“It’s not a significant part of our business, but there is enough there for me to take someone and have half their time devoted to making vinyl a real business,” says John Esposito, president and CEO of WEA Corp., the U.S. distribution company of Warner Music Group, which posted a 30% increase in LP sales last year.

So, there’s no vinyl pressing plants left anyway right? Very wrong. There’s a handful of pressing plants across the USA, UK, Europe and even two active manufacturers in Australia.

“One thing we took away from the talk that I feel is pretty important is pressing size. Some efforts are getting to the point where the records aren’t going to hit store shelves anymore. We‘re past the point where it can be difficult to move 300 copies. You folks making vinyl should strongly consider even a slight increase in the number of copies made available.

The demand is there as well as the infrastructure to handle it. In addition, increasing the number of available copies should do well to keep the eBayers off for a while. If you can do 300 copies, you might as well do 500. If you know you can sell 500, it’s very likely you can sell 1000. ” Tonys Tales of Texas BB discuss the Vinyl Revival panel at SXSW.

Pressing up a release on vinyl is undoubtedly more expensive than CD but as a limited run single or album its more of an event and even a great PR exercise. Safely Meeting Record label boss Carlos Wells sums it up best here. “The vinyl, it’s more of an event. If you throw on a CD, you can almost toss it in from across the room.” A record, by contrast, is a process. “In 20 or 25 minutes you’re going to have to go over, take the arm off, flip it over. You wind up paying more attention.”

Creating a record is a complex process, but essentially breaks down into six separate steps. Taken from the Quick Press website here:

1. Mastering: A mastered DAT or CD is brought to a vinyl press.Two main changes must occur to begin the process of audio mastering:tonal balancing and level adjustment.

2. Cutting: Once the mastered version is finished, the track will be cut into lacquer.A digitally created track will be converted into an analogue wave for cutting lathe.Transferred through an amplifier, the wave travels down the arm of a diamond-cutting stylus and onto a rotating lacquer disc.

3. Stampers: The lacquer or vinyl master is delivered to the pressing plant.The plant completes the following steps:
*The vinyl master is covered with a thin spray and dipped in a bath of electrolyte. A current is passed through the solution and the silver-sprayed lacquer becomes coated in nickel which creates a negative image of the vinyl.

*A second generation negative is created and the nickel plate is peeled from this lacquer to become the stamper. The stamper represents a negative image of one side of the vinyl.
*Two stampers are needed to press up both an A and B sided record.

4. Test Pressings: With both stampers in place, a “puck” of vinyl is introduced into the press. Two labels are placed above and below the puck and the press is closed. In order to flow seamlessly into the grooves of the stamper, the vinyl is heated up to 200 C.

It is then rapidly cooled so that the vinyl can be immediately lifted out of the press. This whole process takes approximately 25 seconds. Normally, a short pressing of 10 copies is made first. These “test pressings” are sent to the record label for approval.

5. Labels: Many people are under the misconception that a “white label” is much cheaper than producing a professionally designed four-colour label. The real expense, however, comes from having the label incorporated into the vinyl. The colour of the label really makes no difference in this process.

6. Artwork: Image is key in almost every industry, making the music industry no exception. Great consideration should go into the label and its packaging, as well as the marketing accompanying its promotional push.

For a rough guide as to how much music you can fit on a vinyl record Nashville veterans UR Pressings have a useful FAQ and quick reference here:

7″ – 4:30 minutes per side @ 45 rpm; 6:00 minutes per side @ 33 1/3 rpm
10″ – 9:00 minutes per side @ 45rpm; 12:00 minutes per side @ 33 1/3
12″ – 12:00 minutes per side @ 45 rpm; 18:00 minutes per side @ 33 1/3 rpm

And there’s more record manufacturing tutorials here and here.

California based Rainbo Records have several short run vinyl pressing deals which start at $1295 for 500 12inch singles and $799 for 500 7inch singles. Things like picture sleeves would add to that cost.

Some pressing plants, like UR are offering vinyl + digital package deals which includes a secure digital music hosting service, custom digital download coupons with unique one-time-use codes, packaged together. With the popularity of new USB turntables kids can plug their vinyl straight into their computer and rip to MP3 anyway.

As for vinyl distribution, well for these short runs a band or DJ would be better served selling discs at gigs and via mail order using Paypal and publicizing things on their MySpace profile and own website.

Such is the fragile nature of the vinyl distribution business that many of the once thriving vinyl specialists have disappeared, leaving a narrow selection of ultra niche companies and major label offshoots.

If you have a release in Florida you don’t want to be trusting your stock with a distributor thousands of miles away in California. Diy for short runs. Mailers you can get here, here or here.

“In the United Kingdom, where the CD single is basically dead, there is such a resurgence in vinyl that retailers can’t keep up with capacity. In the U.S., figures as high as 22 per cent are being floated about the growth in vinyl record sales.”
(National Post : March 2008)

If you want to see what your tracks would sound like on vinyl you can get a one off 7″ cut for around $50 from Custom Records, who’ll even go as far as pressing it in colour vinyl and giving it a picture sleeve for an extra $58!

Part 2 To Follow

USA Pressings:
Dynamic Sun (East Newark, New Jersey)
Archer Record Pressing (Detroit, Michigan)
Erika Records (Downey, California)
United Record Pressing (Nashville,Tennessee)
Vinyl Record Pressing (San Fransisco, California)
Morphius (Baltimore, Maryland)
NSL Alpha Record Services (Plantation, Florida)
RecordPressing.com (San Fransisco, California)
Trutone (New Jersey, NJ)
Dungeon (Portland, Oregon)
Record Tech Inc (Camarillo, Califronia)
Bill Smith Custom Records (El Segundo, California)
Musicol Recording (Columbus, Ohio)

European Pressings
Key Production – London, UK
Curved Pressings – London, UK
JTS Studio – London, UK
MPO – France
Quick Press – London, UK
Portal Space Records – London, UK
Total Vinyl – London, UK
Record Industry – Netherlands
GZ Vinyl (Czech Republic)

Related Reading

Return of the Record: Vinyl Sales on the Increase (Amoeba.com)
Amazon Vinyl Store (Amazon.com)
Teens Not Buying CD’s Anymore? (Exclam.ca)
Hard to Find Records (HTFR.com)
Vinyl Gets its Groove Back (MIT via Time.com) pdf file. Slashdot response
Vinyl Maybe Final Nail in CD’s Coffin (Wired.com) Digg response IndieHQ response
Putting a New Spin on Vinyl Records (NPR)
How to Reissue a Record (Classic Records)
The Making Of Vinyl (Random Good Stuff)
Vinyl vs. iPod (The Huffington Post)
The CD is Dead… Long Live the New CD ? (LAist)
The End Of the Music Biz As We Know It (Forester Research)
The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free (Techcrunch)

I’ve heard lots of stories and theories about how to get your website indexed by Google and the other major search bots, (which basically boil down to Yahoo and MSN) in rapid fashion and my record up to yesterday from starting a new site to seeing search bots/crawlers activity on my server stats has been two days.

That record was trashed yesterday when the Google bot came a calling (crawling?) within two hours of my first post going up on the Musicbizhacks site. And I got a hit from a search query, “how do i get my cd distributed on itunes” that someone Googled, minutes after I’d posted this.

That’s pretty good going by any standards and is a good indication of how much faster and efficient the indexers have become. How did they do that? One simple method actually. I posted an incoming link on my MySpace profile and another in the header of my music directory, Buzzsonic.dj and that was it.

So. Anyone who tells you you need to submit your site to a search engine, or tries to sell you a submission service is living in 2002! Though you can still submit just to make sure of course. Cant get anyone to link into your website (basically all you need is an inbound link from another site that has already been indexed). Then add a link to one of your social network profiles (you have one right?). It really is that simple.

Related Reading

Search Engine Watch (Searchenginewatch.com)
How To Get Indexed By Google (Problogger)
5 Ways To Get a New Site Indexed Within 48 Hours or Less (SEONoobs.com)
Search Engine Optimization Forums (Sitepoint.com)
Search Engine Optimization (Digital Point)

I recently got hold of a copy of a promo video for one of my tracks from the mid 90s, the 99th Floor Elevators “Hooked”.

I was eager to get a copy of the video, which saw some MTV airtime in Europe, simply to use it as another online tool to promote my dance tracks which have recently been enjoying something of a revival in the UK with a series of new dance mixes.

Anyway, I posted the video on MySpaceTV, YouTube, Facebook and Last FM and it was interesting to see the difference in quality of the video stream and also the feedback reaction.

For a start most people associate online video sharing with YouTube, no ifs and buts about that one and that seems to be reflected in the amount of page views and feedback of my promo video, comparing the four services.

I’m pretty sure most people are still not fully aware that Facebook have branched out into MySpace territory with its Facebook Music spin-off and MySpaceTV has a while to go before it gets similar eyeballs to YouTube.

The difference is noticable (at least using this video as an example). The ‘Hooked’ – 99th Floor Elevators video so far has 2095 views on YouTube vs. 80 on MySpaceTV. The video was posted within twenty four hours on each service.

There does seem to be a noticeable quality difference though, with MySpaceTV winning quite easily with a noticeably superior quality stream compared to YouTube.

Though there is a settings change mentioned here to up the default YouTube stream quality. Facebook have a bigger pixel stream though on the downside there is no embed code like the other sites, just an email link to send the video link.

Related Links

Social Impact of YouTube (Wikipedia)
YouTube The King of Video Sharing? (Mashable.com)
List of Video Sharing Websites (Wikipedia)
New YouTube Developer Tools…..(Wired.com)

I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what was causing the Windows Live Writer to crash everytime I tried to insert an image into a post. I back tracked a couple of days to see which recent Firefox plug-ins I’d added and it turns out it was the MySpace toolbar I mentioned here causing the problem.

So, out goes the toolbar and there ends the head scratching. Though at least one good thing came out of my search for solutions, discovering Flickr4Writer.

I have three MySpace profiles, one for my latest music project, one to network my travel site and one which acts as an archive for my old bands music. My latest music profile (the 99th Floor Elevators) is the most active and has proved great for networking and making new contacts in that field.

I actually hate manually visiting MySpace daily so a neat ‘shortcut’ is to install the unofficial MySpace Firefox toolbar which is unobtrusive enough and enables you to quickly toggle between profile pages, messages and the like. The toolbar auto hides when the MySpace page is closed. One thing the toolbar is lacking is the ability to log-in to multiple accounts, that would make it even handier.

Related Links
Download Unofficial MySpace Toolbar (Mozilla.org)
MySpace Toolbar Home (Freewebs.com)

A lot of fuss yesterday caused by a sensationalist Guardian headline “YouTube Overtakes MySpace”. Writer Mark Sweney writes:

“YouTube has established itself at the top of the league of the new generation of community websites by becoming even more popular than MySpace, according to research.
The video sharing site has taken a 3.9% share of global internet visits a day compared with 3.35% for MySpace, according to internet analysis company Alexa.”

What the article fails to tell readers is that the figures were taken from the small percentage of Internet Explorer users who have the Amazon owned Alexa toolbar installed on their browser, hardly an exhaustive user demographic. A fact only Mashable and GigaOm seemed to notice.

Related Reading

YouTube vs MySpace (GigaOm)
YouTube Now More Popular Than MySpace (Mashable)
Who’s Video Is It Anyway? (BusinessWeek)
YouTube Is World’s Fastest Growing Website (Mashable)
MySpace’s Trip to the Top (Slashdot)

Its been a good few months since Buzzsonic heard anything of note on the yet to be fully operational Snocap, the legal P2P download service founded by (original) Napster founder Shaun Fanning. Music blogs Hypebot and Coolfer were the first people this week to spot that a new Snocap technology was being used by new (to us) band the Format, selling tracks via their MySpace profile using the Snocap service Linx.

The Format tracks are available as MP3′s at 79c each and use Paypal as the merchant for payment, though Snocap Linx works with MP3 as well as content encrypted with WMA DRM according to the Snocap website. Bands can cut and paste the Linx code into their MySpace profiles (or any website for that matter) much like other online services like YouTube, Slide and Photobucket and are offering code to MySpace users to promote their own services.

Snocap’s Linx service is also designed to let online retailers sell music from the companies huge selection of songs. Snocap has distribution deals with Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group and Warner Music, along with a number of independent labels.

David Berlind at ZDNet had an interesting point on the news on his blog this week.

“Actually, it’s the independents that will really benefit from MySpace as a sales channel (while the traditional labels go the iTunes, etc. route). While I don’t believe were at a tipping point yet, the idea of commerce-enabling MySpace for music sales could position indies for an interesting offensive against the entertainment establishment. And, with no DRM, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Related Reading

Napster Founder Commerce Enables Unprotected MP3s on MySpace (ZD Net Blogs)
Snocap Looks Beyond P2P (MP3.com)
Napster Guru Fanning Breaks Snocap Silence (Buzzsonic.com) Dec 3 2005
Mashboxx and Snocap Get Busy (Buzzsonic.com) May 6 2005
EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue (Buzzsonic.com) Nov 20 2004
Napster Founder in Major Label P2P Talks (Buzzsonic.com) Nov 13 2004

Nothing new here I guess. Another frustrating time for anyone trying to access their MySpace page over the weekend with a series of outages for the ‘world’s busiest web property’.

The problems continued over the weekend into Monday morning where the site seemed to be completely down. I understand the problems of trying to scale to a user base so massive (between 45 and 80 million users depending on who you listen to) but still it all seems very shoddy when you consider the money floating around here. When was the last time Google or Yahoo was unusable?

Related Reading
MySpace Closed After Power Outage (BBC News)
MySpace Down Due to Power Outage (Digg)
Power Outage Knocks MySpace Offline (Netcraft.com)

As you would expect with something as ubiquitous as MySpace (much like with Google) and its huge user base there’s an ever increasing army of unofficial ‘hacks’ adding features to the insanely popular social networking website.

Mashable have covered “feeding the Myspace beast” well so far here…and here
“The list of sites that feed the MySpace beast is growing longer by the day: RockYou, Slide, Photobucket, NooZ, Abazab, Umundo, Kiko Events, Frappr, BuddyPing, Sitepal, Stickam, Bunchball, MyPickList and Nabbr are among the more interesting plays….”

Some other interesting recent additions include MyWhatSpace a PC desktop app that lets you separate your MySpace friends into groups and send messages to all the members of any group at once. Sounds like a promising idea in theory but I couldn’t get the small app to run and load past the whole page of Adsense ads that greets you on the login page. Web 2.0 news site TechCrunch were overly gushing in praise for the app this week nevertheless.

There’s a possibility that the service violates the MySpace terms of service. The company has already shut down two other services (DatingAnyone and SingleStat.us) operating alongside MySpace in recent months.

The other new service affiliating itself as a ‘MySpace add on’ this past week is Supcast, a free service that allows you to send a text, picture or voice message from your phone directly to your MySpace or blog. Supcast joins a growing list of similar services which include Umundo and Abazab.

Trakzor is another neat idea. Simply put, you add some code to your MySpace profile and Trakzor tracks your visitors. The downside is the app only works if other MySpace users have the Trakzor code added to their profile too. This looks like a service that perhaps MySpace should add for marketers as a premium add-on themselves ?

Elsewhere Frappr, the popular Google Maps mash-up have added a neat hack that adds your MySpace user name to Google Maps and gives you a map of all your friends which you can add to your profile. There’s another unofficial MySpace map service here which maps out users by zip code.

MySpace News Coverage
MySpace Hacked! (TMZ.com) 16 July 2006
MySpace Soars, Hitwise Defends Figures (TechWeb.com) July 14 2006
MySpace vs Yahoo! Mail, or Apples vs Oranges (Jeremy Zawodny) July 12 2206
MySpace Not What You Think ( I Speak Of Dreams) July 11 2006
MySpace the 27.4 Billion Pound Gorilla (TechCrunch.com) June 13 2006
The MySpace Economy (MicroPursuasion.com) June 8 2006
Dont Believe the MySpace Hype (CNNMoney.com) June 7 2006
Feeding the MySpace Beast (Mashable.com) April 19 2006
MySpace Business Lesson:Communication (Wisdump.com) April 18 2006
Scenes From the MySpace Backlash (Wired.com) Feb. 27 2006
Users Crowd Into MySpace (BusinessWeek.com) Nov. 15 2005
Why Murdoch Really Bought MySpace? (GigaOm.com) Aug.6 2005