Real World GarageBand [MacTribe]

MacTribe, June 2007

DIY finds some help.

Studio time, marketing, promotion, pressing, packaging, distribution... all of these things require money and inside connections for up-and-coming musicians. But as technology advances and the phrase "famous on the Internet" begins to translate to dollars, do-it-yourself (DIY) musicians find more ways to work effectively outside of the music industry's traditional system. Enter Apple's GarageBand. This application has become a creative catalyst for everyone from the average tinkerer to the signed artist. From full album production to long-distance collaboration to sketching new songs on the road, Apple's music editing application has given new meaning to the term "garage band," allowing the company to further entrench itself in the music industry.

A perfect example of the DIY band, Los Angeles-based Bastard Fairies put their entire album together in one week using GarageBand. The band picked up Fisher Price toys from thrift stores to add texture to the music, threw in some socially conscious lyrics, stitched everything together in GarageBand, and offer the album as a free download. Band member Robin Davey loves the simplicity of the program and believes it served as an enabler for the band. "It's the quickest way to get your ideas down," he says. "Once you actually open it up and realize how quickly you can build a track it definitely enables that creative process and takes away the need for expensive studios and things like that. Everything is there in one package."

The Fairies advertised their free album on YouTube with videos assembled in Final Cut Pro. One of the videos, a "commercial" for the album, featured an eight-year old girl talking about the perils of religion and the failures of an educational system that pushes religion instead of empathy. The video quickly became popular on YouTube, and criticism from Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly unexpectedly boosted the DIY band's exposure. "People grabbed hold of [the video] and, because it was tagged at the end with the Bastard Fairies website, they discovered the album there," says Davey. "That led to it being most subscribed on YouTube."

Despite the popularity, the Bastard Fairies chose to keep with the DIY spirit and not profit off of the album in the wake of their celebrity status. They will offer a special version with five extra tracks and a bonus DVD for purchase, but the original album will always be free for download. "Because the album was done on a budget of about $10 there's no reason why we can't give it away," he says. "There's no one to tell us that we can't and also if we do that, people are going to download it. We're going to generate fans." Thanks to Apple's technology, they were able to successfully retain full control over the entire process, from recording to distribution and promotion.

Like cassette culture of the '80s, GarageBand is a way for new artists to record a demo, but unlike the '80s cassette culture, social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube allow artists to self-release and build a fan base before finding their way to the airwaves. An existing fan base gives them an advantage when it's time to shop for a label. "We're in this stage where you can do so much more by yourself and I think it's very empowering to be able to record yourself," says singer/songwriter Ari Heist. "As a musician, it's such a key thing because otherwise you'd be spending a whole lot of money to get other people to do it for you." Heist produced and recorded his 2006 EP, "The Green Room Sessions," in his Brooklyn apartment. He played every single instrument on the album—a feat in itself—and assembled the pieces with GarageBand. Unlike the Fairies, however, Heist has been signed to a major label, Columbia, for a few years. "I'm not the first to do this, but I'm really excited about it," he says, taking a break after performing at SXSW. "I use it all the time."

Even artists who don't record entire albums with the software find it a useful part of the creative process. Singer/songwriter Jann Klose uses GarageBand in conjunction with ProTools and Logic to collaborate on songs with his keyboardist. "When there’s a new song idea I usually dump it right into GarageBand," he says. Unlike Logic and Pro Tools, which consist of folders within a file, GarageBand creates a single all-inclusive file, making it easier for artists at different locations to collaborate. And since GarageBand files can be opened in Logic without needing conversion, Jann will open it up there in order to generate and print the arrangements for other parts of the ensemble. "My keyboardist and I go back and forth with the file and we can work on adding strings in MIDI thanks to the new MIDI capability in GarageBand."

GarageBand's ease of use combined with the portability of Mac laptops make it a great application for capturing ideas whenever and wherever they happen. For a touring musician, this is often the bus, the bar, or backstage. Adam Merrin of The 88 depended on GarageBand for the drums on his solo album, but his band, recently featured on the popular television show "The OC," also uses the application when they're on tour. "I remember being on the road and using it to record ideas while we were in the car," he says. "We can just open up the laptop and start creating melody ideas on it."

Apple's recent forays into music have proven incredibly successfully, and GarageBand is no exception. The program has already become popular with average Mac users who just like to geek out and play. Many companies also offer loops for users to download and manipulate. Communities on the Internet like MacJams and iCompositions provide forums for fans of the GarageBand to upload loops and tracks and share them with other members of the community. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has even gotten into the GarageBand spirit. He periodically releases tracks as GarageBand files and encourages user remixes. Since GarageBand is so easy to use, theoretically anyone can make music.

But could GarageBand make it too easy for anyone with a Mac and a mouse to have delusions of rock star grandeur? "No," says Adam Merrin. "The song is still the most important thing. It’s very easy and inexpensive for people to put out their own records but the best stuff is always well written." Robin Davey agrees there's no hope without some idea of what a song is all about. "That's the essential thing: the song that you start with," he says. "Without that you're not going to get anywhere."

As a viable option to expensive studio time, GarageBand will help good do-it-yourself artists emerge on little to no budgets. But unlike "American Idol," which offers the hope of three minutes of fame even if you sing like a jackal, some semblance of musical talent and a sense of creativity is a prerequisite for getting anywhere with the music you create, even in GarageBand. Still, the consensus is that it's worth digging into and exploring what GarageBand has to offer. "I couldn’t recommend it more," says Merrin. "The fact that it comes installed with all the Mac computers is the coolest thing of all." Robin Davey sees it as part of a trend in technology making artists more self-reliant. "I think that the more and more computers evolve, the easier it gets for artists to put their creativity down."

But while GarageBand won't replace the studio any time soon its rise is certainly not good news for everyone. Heist believes an easy and affordable program like GarageBand negatively impacts smaller independent studios who rely on the business of small up-and-coming bands. "You see a lot of studios going out of business, a lot of studios that were once very sought-after and had really nice stuff to offer, but you can create something that's as good or almost as good in your own home," he says. "It's a no brainer. You won't want to spend that much money everyday to go to a studio."

Jan Klose sees its accessibility as nothing but positive. "If you’re creative there’s a lot of things you can do with it right off the bat. The main thing is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get it since it comes with iLife and new Macs. The fact that it’s so fun and easy to use makes it an obvious choice."

Time will tell whether or not GarageBand will have a lasting impact on the music industry, but it's clear for now that Apple fortifies its place in the music scene with this DIY-inspired application. Combined with the ability to build a following on the Internet, GarageBand has the potential to revolutionize an entire segment of the digital music industry.

— Jess Hemerly, 2007

Interview with David Pescovitz [MacTribe]

MacTribe, March 2007 [Links to Part 1 and Part 2]

David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this first of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his work at the Institute for the Future and MAKE: magazine.

MacTribe: Tell me about the Institute for the Future.

David Pescovitz: It's a non-profit think tank in Palo Alto that's been around since the late 60s. It spun out of RAND Corporation where some computer scientists and researchers were doing forecasting work but it was classified. They wanted to take the methodologies they were using and apply them in a more public way. So they formed the Institute. We help companies, governments, foundations, and other organizations think about the long-term future, often five to ten years out, and how developments in technology and culture may impact people's lives. Then based on that foresight they can hopefully make better decisions today.

MT: So there's some corporate responsibility stuff?

DP: We don't have a specific agenda that we're pushing. I'm part of the Technology Horizons Program where we look at everything from info tech all the way to synthetic biology, nanotech, neuro-prosthetics and brain implants, smart drugs, advanced simulations, these kind of things. The Institute also has a Ten-Year Forecast Program Program that focuses on discontinuities not just in tech but also in economics, health, and many other areas. Then we have a Health Horizons Program that focuses on the global health economy, medical technologies, and related societal forces.

MT: How do you come up with your forecasts?

DP: Nobody can predict the future, and we always tell people, "Don't believe anyone who says they can, especially if they're from California." The good news is that you don't have to predict the future. We look for what we call "weak signals." A weak signal could be a business deal; it could be a scientific paper that was published, or some kind of innovation or scientific breakthrough. When you look at these weak signals and combine them together as a complex ecology of interesting points, it's possible to find patterns and intersections and get a sense of where things may be headed. The future is a cone of uncertainty. The close you are, the clearer things are. But the further out you look, the foggier, the more uncertain, the future becomes. So using a variety of methodologies, we try to narrow that cone of uncertainty. So we do interviews, we do expert workshops where we bring in smart people from different fields to think about the future with us—scientists and journalists and researchers—and we read a lot of papers, we do ethnography. Several of my colleagues have spent time in Russia and South America and China hanging out with families and seeing how they use technology and how they live. So if you synthesize all of that together, it's possible to create a forecast, which we define as an "internally consistent, plausible view of what could happen."

MT: So in a strange way it's like informed science fiction?

DP: Science fiction is more like scenario planning, where you make up a very specific story of what could happen. That's one of the things we do but not the only thing. For example, one of my colleagues, Jason Tester, makes artifacts from the future, which are like physical objects that don't yet exist but embody some kind of technological trend. It helps people understand how the technology of the future might impact their lives. The idea really is to get people thinking systematically about the long-range future. I want people to participate in the conversation about the future so that they can help create the future that they want.

MT: Are a lot of corporations your partners?

DP: We have many large companies as our clients, and also governments, and other institutions. Last year, I contributed to a project for the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Innovation where we took a broad look at how science and technology might progress over the next fifty years. A half-century is a very long time, so that was incredibly challenging and a lot of fun. One of the outcomes is an online forum of 100 outlook pages exploring a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies, from dark energy to climate change to technologies of cooperation to ecosystem modeling to programmable materials. In December, the forecast forum was opened to the public.

MT: And how have IFTF's predictions held up?

DP: We don't make predictions. We make forecasts.

MT: Right, forecasts.

DP: So we're the only futures organization that actually outlived its forecasts. We've done reasonably well. Some of the founders were actually involved in the ARPANET project that led to the Internet, and developed pioneering teleconferencing systems, and so we were spot on in terms of things like teleconferencing and groupware, which isn't unlike a wiki. One trend we missed was the popularity of SUVs.

MT: Oh really?

DP: We expected that by now people would have been driving much more fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead the pendulum swung the other way. Maybe it's swinging back.

MT: How long have you been working with the Institute?

DP: I've been working with the Institute in various ways—as an affiliate researcher and now as a part-time research director—for about a year and a half.

MT: That sounds very cool.

DP: It's an amazing job and I feel very fortunate to work with the people I do. It's also similar to journalism in a way. The reason I became a journalist was because there were too many things that interested me to pick one field. And at the Institute, if I'm curious about something or spot an unusual signal of some kind, I can research it and ask the experts to help me understand it. Then I get to do the synthesis to try and figure out what I might mean.

MT: That is fun.

DP: It's sort of like grad school but you get paid for it.

MT: And you don't really have to answer to anybody.

DP: Well we answer to the clients but a lot of the time our forecasts may not necessarily be pleasing to them either. And that's okay. Our aim is to provoke.

MT: So how did you get into working with MAKE: magazine?

DP: MAKE: is a DIY tech projects magazine published by O'Reilly Media. The Editor-in-Chief is Mark Frauenfelder, who is my best friend and my co-editor at BoingBoing. He was involved very early on and then me into the fold. I've been having a great time. And again, the work at MAKE: really is a natural fit with the main thing I've always been interested in, how people can use technology to empower themselves. MAKE: also has threads that lead back to the Whole Earth Review and the 60s counterculture and the personal computer revolution and hacking. It's people taking control of the tools that are around them and making those tools work they way they want. The founder and publisher of MAKE:, Dale Dougherty and I, have become close friends in part because we share this sense of wonder about how the world works. The satisfaction comes from knowing and learning and, of course, doing.

MT: Do you ever try to make some of the stuff?

DP: [laughs] You'd have to ask my wife if I ever succeed. Sadly, I don't have as much time as I would like to make things. My excuse is that I make words. I just have such a huge appreciation for the people who actually are making things.

MT: What are some of the coolest projects you've seen?

DP: Last year in April, we held a big Maker Faire where 20,000 people came to the San Mateo Fairgrounds and more than 150 makers presented their projects. It was really a celebration of DIY and the maker mindset. There were so many projects there that I liked. There was a great one where this recycling group made a supercomputer by networking together a bunch of outdated old PCs and powered the whole thing on a vegetable oil generator they made [EcoGeek link]. We're having another Bay Area Maker Faire in May this year and then one in Austin in November.

MT: That's cool.

DP: Yeah, the Maker Faire is pretty incredible. I have a secret love for robots, and there were a lot of interesting robots attending the Faire. I like it when people convert old junk into robots. We had a project in MAKE: on how to make Mousey the Junkbot, a little mobile robot built from an old computer mouse. [MAKE: editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder recently appeared on The Colbert Report and he brought Mousey the Junkbot to show Stephen Colbert. Video here.]

MT: Did you try that one?

DP: No but I plan to when my son's a little older. The fact is that a lot of people who read MAKE: may not necessarily make the projects in it. Many do, but a lot probably don't. I think that reading about how people do things and what astounding projects they've made is inspiring for anything that you do. It's really exciting to see what people are capable of making.

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Part 2

David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this second of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his interest in technology, Boing Boing, and the success of Apple.

MacTribe: Where did your interest in technology and its potential to empower people begin?

DP: I was always very interested in science and understanding how the world works. In the very early '80s I got involved in personal computers. I'm sure your audience will appreciate that my first computer—well actually my first computer was a Texas Instruments, they probably don't appreciate that—but for my Bar Mitzvah I got an Apple II. And it didn't do anything interesting when you turned it on; there was just this blinking cursor. So one option was to buy software like games or other programs on a floppy, but those were expensive. Instead, we learned to program in BASIC and made our own games. I think that that something is lost today now that the computers have a curtain hiding the secret codes that make them work.

MT: When did you first go online?

DP: Once I got a modem in 1983, I became active on computer bulletin board systems and the weird information I could find there, mostly silly pirate and anarchist cookbook type stuff. In high school, I was also involved in 'zines and the punk scene. Then in college, I began writing about music and the counterculture. Around the time that I graduated, I became aware of a movement in San Francisco emerging at the intersection of counterculture and personal computers and drugs and music and young people empowering themselves with technology. I was already fascinated with San Francisco's history of avant garde art and industrial culture, so news of the emerging cyberculture was like a magnet and it brought me out here.

MT: Is that what you envisioned getting into as a kid?

DP: When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an engineer and go to MIT. For whatever reason, I blew off math in high school and my interests shifted. But I don't really have any regrets. Engineers often spend five or ten years on one or two problems and I think that would drive me crazy. I get to hop from one thing to the next at a moment's notice, following my curiosity wherever it takes me.

MT: I feel like the intellectuals in the Bay Area here are really the technology geeks and thinkers, whereas on the east coast the intellectuals are all about more “traditional” intellectual interests.

DP: There's definitely a culture of technological creativity, innovation, and experimentation in San Francisco. I think it survives whether the technology economy is bubbling or not. Money comes, money goes, but people continue to do “strange things with electricity," as the Dorkbot slogan goes. So the Bay Area is a fantastic place for someone like me who is constantly seeking novelty.

MT: That's why I like writing. You also don't have to commit to something for five years and see it fail but you do get to be a sort of participatory observer.

DP: Honestly, I don't even really like to write. I think I'm okay at it, but I much prefer to go out and meet people and learn interesting things from them. Of course, at some point I have to sit down and actually write about what I've learned. But I suppose that's also a good thing to do because if people hopefully read what I've written then I've done my part in sharing the knowledge too.

MT: Since you've been an Apple fan since the very beginning, how do you feel Apple's sudden success in the last couple years?

DP: I've been using an Apple since '82 so I literally grew up with them. In fact, when I still had my Texas Instruments computer, I drew an Apple logo on an index card and taped it to the top. I think it's amazing how successful Apple has become by paying attention to things like design and aesthetics, which other companies didn't seem to be caring much about. My friend Doug Rushkoff talks about the fact that advertising in the traditional sense doesn't work anymore because we're all clued in on the ways that companies try to coerce us. The only way you can really advertise a product is by making the product itself an advertisement for itself. I think that Apple does that extremely well.

MT: Are you going to get an iPhone?

DP: My Treo screen just cracked and June can't get here soon enough for me.

MT: What makes people so insanely passionate about their Macs?

DP: I wouldn't say I'm insanely passionate about Apple, but I do like most of their products. For me, the computer is just a tool, and the tool that I happen to like is made by this particular company. But I don't identify myself by the brand of computer that I use. I think that the Apple fan, literally someone who is fanatical about the company, really isn't that different from someone who is incredibly passionate about the car she drives or the brand of clothes that he wears. The brand becomes part of their identity. It embodies their lifestyle. What's more interesting to me is what people make with their tools, and Macs allow you to make a lot of very interesting things. That’s not to say that Apple isn’t without its problems,
particularly around their copy protection strategy in iTunes. However I was delighted to hear that Steve Jobs recently seems to be changing his, er, tune on DRM.

MT: I think the difference between somebody who's really fanatical about a brand of car and someone who's really fanatical about a brand of computer is that it's actually the thing that they're fanatical about that connects them to the place where they can be fanatical.

DP: That's a great insight. Is there a comparable fanaticism surrounding Windows?

MT: I haven't seen it but people claim it exists.

DP: You'd have to look at our stats, but I think around a quarter of our readers use Macintosh. [He's right about the stats, 23.8% of Boing Boing's visitors are on Macs.]

MT: Speaking of Boing Boing… how did it come about?

DP: Boing Boing is the blog that I co-edit with Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin, and Cory Doctorow. John Battelle is our band manager. Mark and his wife Carla Sinclair started bOING bOING as a print zine in the late 1980s. It was a photocopied zine about fringe culture, underground art, pranks, and that sort of thing. When I was in college, I absolutely loved bOING bOING. Then, shortly after I moved to San Francisco in 1993 to attend grad school at Berkeley, I started writing for Wired. That was around the third or fourth issue of Wired, I think. Mark was working at Wired and I introduced myself to him right away, bOING bOING had an office downstairs from Wired that it shared with a couple of other magazines. Mark brought me down to meet Carla and we became fast friends. They assigned me an article about the revival of Goth for the next issue of bOING bOING and then I became a contributing editor. Mark also created a Boing Boing Web site where we posted some archived articles and other random stuff. I worked on a few issues after that but it had become such a hassle to deal with distributors who owed you like $10 or whatever that Mark and Carla decided not to do the print edition any longer. So we started posting articles online that we wanted to write but couldn't find a home for anywhere else. For example, I wrote an article about people who drilled holes in their heads to achieve enlightenment.

MT: How did it become a proper blog?

DP: When Blogger was first developed, Mark tried it out for an article he was writing and converted Boing Boing to a blog. This was in January of 2000 and he started blogging pretty regularly, just very short descriptions of links he found interesting. When Mark went on vacation, he asked Cory Doctorow, whose science fiction he liked, to be the guest blogger. Cory stayed on and then I started blogging too but not nearly as often as those guys. We also had guest bloggers, including Xeni. Our readers liked her posts so much that we just asked her to be a permanent fixture. What's amazing is that at its biggest, bOING bOING the print 'zine was probably read by maybe 20,000 people, and now more than a million folks read the site every day. So Boing Boing is the overnight success that took almost twenty years. I like to imagine what it would be like if all the Boing Boing readers lived in one place. It'd probably be a very surreal city.

MT: And a little scary, for sure.

DP: But we all have our different reasons and mindsets about posting. For me, Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosities. Those were the predecessors to modern day museums. In the Victorian era, people would have these cabinets or even entire rooms devoted to unusual, natural, and man-made artifacts that they collected—strange coral formations, two-headed animals in jars, exotic weapons, weird plants, scientific specimens, that sort of thing. I love that whole mindset because it's really about appreciating the wonder of the world. So Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosity for me. I put things in it that I come across or that our readers are kind enough to share with me. I collect them there, on Boing Boing.

MT: Do you guys all sort through the submissions yourselves?

DP: Yes, the submissions go to all of us. And we get hundreds every day.

MT: Do you talk about who's going to post what?

DP: This surprises some people but we almost never talk about what we're going to post. In fact, we almost never have meetings of any kind. I think we've all been in the same room maybe five times. Ever. And we've probably been on the phone all together less than a dozen times. So the conversations between us on email are very rarely about editorial. They're more about formatting issues, technical glitches, or whether we want to accept a particular advertiser, but never about editorial plans.

MT: And you've never blogged the same thing?

DP: Oh yeah, we've blogged the same things many times. And then one person will notice it and say, "Hey, so and so already blogged that an hour ago," and then you just take it down.

MT: But you all do sort of have your own beats, right?

DP: Again, beats have never ever been discussed. We just have our own interests that we pursue and you can watch them change over time by looking at what we post. Of course, there are some obvious themes that are ongoing like Cory's copy-fight activism and Disney, Mark's interest in mid-century illustration and animation, Xeni's interest in technology in developing nations and alternative sex practices, and I'm obviously deep into weird science and strange phenomenon. And, um, Bigfoot. What I think is amazing is that there are so many people who share at least some of those interests with us. Not very long ago, it was tough if you didn't live in a huge metropolitan city to find people who shared some of the strange or obscure interests that you might have. A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." Boing Boing helps me do that.


— Jess Hemerly, 2007

MySpace Virtual Demo [MacTribe]

MacTribe, January 2007 [Link Part 1 & Part 2], also appeared in MacTribe's first print edition.

How MySpace Connects Artists, Labels, and Fans

Teenagers adore it. Young adults use it to pass the time at lame desk jobs and track down people from their past. Predators use it to zero in on potential victims. Parents fear it more than any parent feared the Beatles and Elvis's gyrating hips combined, and other people just think it's a stupid waste of time and energy. So what could possibly make MySpace useful beyond worldwide Internet distraction?

Music, that's what.

Before the dawn of the Internet age, when everybody suddenly fancied themselves an expert in web site design, musicians looking to promote their work had to do so through analog means: demo tapes, flyers, performances at artist showcases, etc. And just because they got a gig or found an A&R exec who’d bite doesn’t mean they’d have the one thing that can keep a musician’s career going for a long time: fans.

The digital revolution made it easy to upload tracks to a server and put them on the Internet, where everybody has access to them. But band web pages required at least rudimentary HTML skills, and not everyone broke down and bought a copy of HTML for Dummies. Now, anybody with a few tracks, a computer, and an Internet connection can create a self-promotion music page thanks to the controversial juggernaut of a social networking site, MySpace.

A few months ago, I received a MySpace message from Karl Miles, a former high school classmate who I’ve been out of touch with for 7 years, asking me to go to his MySpace Music page and check out his tracks. He's starting a career as a solo folk artist and found me through the magic of MySpace. He wanted to know what I thought of his music so I went to his profile and listened to his tracks, played through the built-in mini player. Since he made them available for free I was also able to download them, save them to my computer, and play them for my friends.

Karl admits that part of the attraction to MySpace was its ease of use, having put off setting up a "real" site for far too long. And he doesn't subscribe to the delusion that MySpace will make him famous. "I find an open mic will generate more attention," he says. "It is more likely a person will hear about me some where else and check if I'm on MySpace." He certainly doesn't believe that MySpace is an easy way out of a musician's traditional struggle to be heard. "You still have to do leg work, play gigs," he says. "If you get a buzz outside MySpace maybe you can get one on MySpace. But I don't think MySpace will create one for you on its own."

Ezra Caraeff, owner of Portland-based indie label Slowdance Records, sees many bands are not as realistic as Miles. Instead they believe that a MySpace page and 400,000 friends is a quick ticket to Mick Jagger status. "I think a lot of bands think friends equal sales," he explains. "But those are the same bands who think emailing me to 'check them out' or 'you should sign us, we RoCk' [sic] is a good idea as well."

The problem with MySpace for many hopeful musicians is that the "adding friends" feature creates a false sense of audience, and with that false sense comes an inflated perception of fame. There are actually programs that crawl MySpace on a band’s behalf and add friends at random, an act equivalent to email spamming. "Since it's so lawless," says Caraeff, "it's a chance for these unknown bands to be on an even plane with known artists. Like, we don't have a record or play shows, but we have as many friends as Hoobastank." Caraeff also worries that the meaning of the word “friend” will be forever corrupted by the MySpace “friend” system.

Yet despite this grand delusion factor, Ezra's label insists that all of their artists have MySpace pages, most of which are maintained by interns. Even his label itself has a page, and Slowdance has used the bulletin feature to reach bands' audiences—although Ezra still thinks email blasts are more direct and consequently much more effective. A blog post on the profile—which touts the label as the "Best. Label. Ever."—begs musicians not to spam them with requests to listen to their tracks.

As the head of a label, Caraeff sees the proliferation of bands with little talent but a lot of friends as just another stage in the evolution of the music industry. "My brother used to work at Capitol Records and I remember going there when I was in like 10th grade and seeing crates of demos in this dumpster," he reminisces. "It's a very sobering thing. MySpace reminds me of that on a daily basis… so much delusion."

But not every band that’s active on MySpace is mired in delusion. One band that has found success via the Internet is Saosin, a post-hardcore band who got their start by posting tracks to a variety of Internet music forums. Their tracks caught on, and their first show was jammed with kids clamoring to see the band they'd heard on the Internet. They now have a deal Capitol Records and just finished their third Warped Tour.

Saosin maintains a MySpace page. In an interview with bassist Chris Sorensen he made it clear that the guys in the band actually use it. Part of the fun for Chris is the ability to listen to a band’s tracks on one page and then “go check out some hot babe’s page.” The band’s page boasts over 178,000 friends and actual band members answer messages.

Another up-and-coming band that actively uses MySpace is Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective, an Americana group from the San Diego area that tours widely all over California. Recently nominated for the title of Best American Band for the San Diego Music Awards, band member Louis Caverly says they use it for at least an hour every day when they’re not on the road. “MySpace is a community and for any community to work you have to talk to the people,” says Caverly. “It is pretty rad to talk directly with folks, be it potential fans or possibly a personal hero that you stumble upon.”

At first it just seemed like an easy place to upload tracks but Caverly now believes that it is a great tool to have in the arsenal as they build their career. They will solicit potential fans but not by using a “friend adder.” Instead, they take the time to surf the site for people with tastes that match their style and for bands that play a similar kind of music. For them, it’s really about logging on and making it work. “MySpace will help us to increase our audience because if you use it, it works.”

Shawn Hatfield, an experimental electronic musician in San Francisco, has a similar philosophy when it comes to reaching out through MySpace. "I already had a personal page and figured it would be a good place to give my fans access to information on upcoming projects and also a way for them to feel like they've had a personal connection with me that goes beyond just owning the CD or record," he says. Hatfield has had offers to play gigs overseas through MySpace and believes that MySpace has the potential to help him gain enough attention to score larger gigs.

But how realistic is it that the music industry sees these band pages as anything more than must-have novelties for their artists? Well, if an artist catches the eye of an active MySpace user who happens to work in A&R (artist and repertoire, in case you have always wondered what it stood for), it’s very realistic. And such A&R reps do exist. Tony Kiewel, head of A&R for indie label SubPop, is one active user who believes that MySpace is something more than just a project for interns or a collective unheard cry for attention. "I definitely look at it to hear new stuff both as a fan of music and as an A&R guy," he says. "If I like a band I'll look at their page and often times end up listening to their friends’ bands that they have in the top 10 or whatever that little list is." So there's no algorithm that converts MySpace friends to record sales but who a musician is connected to and how may lead to an important discovery by the right person.

Kiewell also relies on the site as a research tool and a quick way to zero in on what people are listening to. "You can't Google 'The Books' and find anything helpful about the band without some serious digging," Kiewell explains. “If I go to MySpace and do a band name search I can find them in seconds." And it's not just a band bio that you'll find; it’s an interactive page full of information. "I can hear them. I can see where they're from. I can see who they're fans of," says Kiewell.

And for musicians, the ability to check out who other musicians are into makes it an extremely useful networking tool. Solo artist Lia Rose experienced this first hand when one of her favorite indie musicians, Damien Jurado, left a comment on her MySpace music page. “I could hardly believe it, and of course returned the sentiment with a comment on his page,” she says. That comment led to an interesting chain of events for Rose. A member of a band in Holland, Winterbirds, found Rose’s comment on Jurado’s page and they added each other as friends. “After about a year of corresponding,” she tells me, “he gives me an internet music challenge by sending a song with just guitar and inviting me to write lyrics and melody and send some vocals back.” This correspondence turned into a project called Weatherkingdom that, naturally, has its own MySpace page too.

MySpace is more than just another venue for Internet voyeurism—it is actually a fantastic tool for labels, fans, and artists alike. “The real take-a-ways include finding other artists to play shows with, Internet radio stations to spin our songs, industry contacts, far away friends and folks that can help our career grow,” believes Louis Caverly. And the recent announcement that MySpace has teamed up with Snocap to allow artists to sell their tracks directly through MySpace pages will only make things more interesting. “I think it will be the great equalizer for those bands that hoard ‘friends,’” Caraeff contends. “They will soon find out the sobering results of 40,000 friends and $6.00 in total downloads.”

But will the day come when a label “discovers” a band through their MySpace page? "It's totally possible," Kiewell of SubPop predicts. "It hasn't happened yet but I bet it will soon.”

— Jess Hemerly 2007