The Myspace Years (Who remembers Myspace?)

Remember?

Myspace was the biggest social networking platform in the world pre-Facebook. It was a progenitor of YouTube, now the main audio-visual music platform and was the platform that helped launch the careers of artists like Taylor Swift, Niki Minaj, Lily Allen, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and My Chemical Romance among others.

Napster, the ‘illegal’ file-sharing service really shook up the corporate music business in the early millennium by allowing mainly files in the then new MP3 form free of charge which brought into question the whole business about copyright and royalty payments. There were others, like Limewire (which eventually got shut down), but Napster was the biggie. Business didn’t like it and neither did most big name rock stars. I seem to remember one exception; Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. Remember in the late 80’s the “Home taping is killing music” campaign? You probably don't. Anyway, Chrissie publicly spoke out against it when most ‘stars’ were saying it was killing their ‘creativity’. She maintained that she learned to play guitar and write songs as a teenager based on all the ‘pirated’ cassettes she was given by friends when she couldn’t afford to buy her own albums. So why should kids have to pay for old recorded music? Those established musicians had already made their money! Few agreed. Especially the rock stars.

But Napster did feed into the popularisation of the then online music craze. I’ll digress for a bit and talk about a thing called Taxi but it ’s important to this story and was important for me.

Taxi is an independent A&R (Artist and Repertoire) business based in California and was the first way non-signed artists could effectively pitch their music to record companies and TV/Film companies. Back in the days of ‘dial up’ and living, at that time, in Portugal’s Algarve region, I had met a successful song writer in 2004 called Mike Myers who wrote among other hits “I’m In The Mood For Dancing” which was a UK No. 2 single for The Nolan Sisters back in 1980 or thereabouts. He’d also written top twenty hits for Billy Ocean, Heywood and Dollar, typical early-eighties pop acts. I had done some work for him as a studio engineer in his facility in Portugal and some occasional session work. I told him I had found a site called Broadjam on the internet, an online much community for musicians, and was seeking a way to get my music towards a publishing deal and asked him how I should go about it. I told him that Broadjam, a music community had this grade of paid membership called Taxi Member where you could submit three songs to Taxi every month for a fee. Taxi would then critique the songs and give feedback via Broadjam to the artist and, if suitable, would forward appropriate tracks to record companies and film music supervisors.

Myers told me that with the then creation of MP3’s, digital music was fast becoming the future and he’d heard good things about Taxi. I joined Broadjam as a Taxi Member and started recording and uploading tracks with the intention of getting them professionally heard and possibly published.

Taxi had been on the go since 1991 when founder Mike Laskow started representing indie musicians and songwriters as an independent A&R company by sending members’ cassette tapes of largely home recordings to record companies and film and TV music supervisors when no record company wouldn’t touch you if you hadn't been 'scouted' by their own A&R. I went to my first Taxi Road Rally in Los Angeles in 2005. It was a fascinating experience which I must cover in another written article sometime soon. The Rally was effectively four days of meeting record company personnel, songwriting experts, gear experts, producers and other aspiring musicians in a big hotel in West Hollywood. On my first visit to L.A. I found myself having dinner with a VIP husband and wife, both Grammy Award winners.

At that Rally it became clear that CD’s were going to be replaced by digital files called MP3’s which had been around for a couple of years by this time. This meant that individual songs could be sold rather than complete albums and it meant that selling, shopping and exposure could be done online without a physical product - by anyone. The good news for creators would be that you could release one single song at a time, allowing you as an Indie artist to control the budget and generate income towards your next release. You no longer had to be contracted into an album deal, although that was still valid and profitable at the time - if you got a hit, that is! The web medium for this at the time was a site called Myspace. You could make yourself a profile and upload your music for free so that anyone in the world could listen to it. People were signing up like crazy. If you weren’t already on Myspace, you needed to get on it fast. It was your window to the world.

Music twenty years ago was still music albeit loaded onto a webpage as an MP3, normally 128kbps, so nowhere near audio HiFi quality. But people were buying iPods and converting their CD’s to MP3 format and storing all their music on them. They could listen to their entire album collection on headphones as they commuted to work on the train or bus. YouTube hadn’t yet happened and streaming….well, that hadn’t even been thought about.

Music communities like broadjam.com and others started gaining attention with aspiring unsigned artists. These sites provided a great way to collaborate without the musician having to leave his or her computer and with what seemed at the time, the looming, impending death of the record company and label (which never actually happened). These communities ran competitions with decent prizes where as a member and Musician/Producer you would write, record and upload songs to compete with other members from all round the world. It may not have been anywhere near commercial studio broadcast quality, but it was a way in to a world which may have been closed to certain creators and innovators previously. As a musician starting to navigate music production and songwriting, I found this to be a great way to stretch myself, try something new and get out of your comfort zone, improving my skills.

These communities were noticed by established professional musicians as well, not just the bedroom warriors. Many saw their career slowly dying as their record company let them go, or put up less money for their next album and this was happening to some big names as well as less well-known artists. Some established artists decided to engage in some of these communities as they saw them as a way to keep their name alive with a growing community of musicians - some of whom were professionals - they could interact with and who could even become new fans. The days of the rock star pedestal seemed to have gone. Everyone was on a much more level playing field now. And it seemed to last for a few short years before bigger changes came along by virtue of the rapidly changing technology scene.

In 2006 I won a recognised songwriting contest in Ireland. Belfast to be specific. Belfast was the twin city of Nashville, Tennessee. Through winning, I got to perform with some recognised Ivor Novello award winning ’Number 1’ songwriters, mainly Graham Gouldman of 10cc and Benny Gallagher of Gallagher & Lyle but also American Grammy winners Don Schlitz (the writer of country hit “The Gambler” made famous by Kenny Rogers), Ralph Murphy, Pat Alger, Richard Leigh, Tony Arata, Paul Overstreet, Lee Roy Parnell, Mark Selby and Tia Sillers. All of a sudden I was an 'award winner'. And winning is important if you want to get noticed. Rarely do second-placed individuals get the accolade they may deserve.

This win may have gotten me recognition in the music press which I was unaware of but I started to receive messages from established artists about my music on Myspace and on Broadjam. Between 2006 and 2009 I received messages mainly on Myspace but also on other sites - some of congratulations, some of invitation to link to their page and discover their music - from the following known artists:

David Knopfler (ex-Dire Straits and brother of Mark Knopfler) personally connected and invited me to discover his music.

Laura Marling emailed me to check out her music

Ellie Goulding (a young teenage emerging artist at the time) to check out her music.

Charlie Dore (famous for the song “Captain of the Airwaves” and who was a fellow finalist in the folk category of the then nascent UK Songwriting Competition, winning the category and overall songwriting prize for that year) congratulated me on my finalist entry.

Malcolm Le Maistre (founder member of the famous 60’s progressive folk rock band, “The Incredible String Band”, messaged me to congratulate me on my songwriting success.

Jason Scheff (a new member in Broadjam but better know as the bass player and vocalist in the supergroup Chicago who replaced Peter Cetera) messaged me about his new approach to marketing his own music away from the record companies asking if I would take a listen.

Salvatore Maresca Serra (established Italian classical and jazz piano maestro and fellow competitor in the Broadjam contests). We became online friends.

Then there was other meetings in The Myspace Years which most likely would not have been possible had I not been able to put my recorded music online;

Benny Gallagher (had a string of hits with performing and writing partner Graham Lyle during the 70’s). I met, performed (and drank lots) with him at The Belfast Nashville Songwriting festival in 2006. We became friends. We still are to this day. He comes originally from Largs in Ayrshire, not too far from where I came from. This might partly explain the bond.

Graham Gouldman (again from Belfast Nashville. Multiple number one hit songwriter and member of the prog rock band 10cc). He had his first number one hit at the age of nineteen with a song called "Bus Stop", recorded by The Hollies. I shared a stage with him. A lovely genuine man. It was such an honour.

Don Schlitz (the man who wrote “The Gambler”, one of the biggest, most successful country songs ever). After a songwriting teaching session he and I spent a fair bit of an afternoon discussing my work and how he wrote “The Gambler”. he was someone who was a left-field thinker. A brilliant man with a brilliant mind - and subsequently a string of number one hits.

Colin Hay (founder member of Australian rock band Men At Work), regaled me with some stories of when he was a youngster growing up in Saltcoats, Ayrshire. Another Ayrshire man.

Ricky Ross (founder member of Deacon Blue). We briefly discussed the Raintown album before he was being interviewed by BBC Radio Ulster. I told him I knew his wife as she’d been to the same school as me. We got on to talking about other people we both knew. It turned out there were many!

Tia Sillers and Mark Selby (of The Kenny Wayne Shepard Band), the married couple I had dinner with at the Taxi Road Rally in 2005, were at the 2006 Belfast Nashville Songwriting Festival and saw me get my prize - a hand built Avalon acoustic guitar. They were well known in the Country Music scene having “There’s Your Trouble”, a number one for The Chicks (formerly The Dixie Chicks) and “I Hope You Dance”, a number one for Lee Ann Womack and also a top twenty hit for Irish singer Ronan Keating.

None of the above would have been possible for me had it not been for The Myspace Years. Then about five years later, technology allowed for streaming platforms to start changing the music scene once again.

Now everyone can have their own ‘Spotify’ playlists. A kind of specially-tailored listening experience which you have to pay for but have control over (largely) what you want to listen to. It’s radio, but not like it used to be. There isn't a communal exposure. Not like the old BBC Radio 1 days in the UK. Apart from BBC radio which was financed from television licenses, commercial radio used to be free as its funding came from advertising. What music radio played helped dictate the fashions of the time and became an essential part of growing up. Streaming sites on the other hand you pay for and you still get bombarded with advertisements unless you pay the top tier subscription. Times have changed; everything’s on demand, but now you’re effectively paying for what used to be free.

And the creators? The big names do very well out of streaming sites. And the Indies? Well, I recently checked my stats on Distrokid, the online music distribution system I use. I had just short of three-thousand plays of a track from my latest album, Los Perros Del Infierno within the first two months of its distribution. My mechanical royalty on this? Thirty-five cents! Impossible for artists to make revenue from - unless you're a superstar.

And Myspace? Who remembers Myspace? Well, after many takeovers and buyouts, it seemed, due to a technical malfunction, to lose almost all of the music and video content which had been uploaded from its start! Eh? Yes, I thought so too. So if you'd had an inclination to look for your old Myspace site, forget it. It’s no longer there. The site itself is still around, but since 2022 is no longer accepting uploads or downloads of music or video from ordinary members. It’s more of an entertainment news site these days. For big names only..

Still, in these days of streaming platforms and music video (as apparently all music needs to have visuals these days for it to be interesting), I sometimes long for the old, simple Myspace Years.