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| In keeping it old school, here is one of John and Shawn outside the studio way back in 2005 |
I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the last couple of years both lamenting the fall of MySpace, and complaining about the constant frustration of trying to use ill-suited Facebook to promote our band.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not Facebook’s fault. Facebook was created as a sort of online yearbook for lonely single people, and I assume that it still works well for them today – just not for bands. The band stuff on Facebook was kind of an afterthought, and the resulting chaos means that a band has to fight the site for every basic thing it would like to do (fact: I would need to scan and upload my driver’s license for permission to upload a KP video directly to Facebook). MySpace, on the other hand, was created specifically so that any person (let alone a band of people) with enough money to buy a guitar could easily and intuitively bury their friends’ MySpace inboxes in so many requests and event invitations that it would be impossible for those friends not to acknowledge that person’s possession of said guitar. All you needed was that ax and that MySpace, and you were set. Having three guitars, you can imagine how happily occupied with self-promotion I was back in the glory days when MySpace was still a thing.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not Facebook’s fault. Facebook was created as a sort of online yearbook for lonely single people, and I assume that it still works well for them today – just not for bands. The band stuff on Facebook was kind of an afterthought, and the resulting chaos means that a band has to fight the site for every basic thing it would like to do (fact: I would need to scan and upload my driver’s license for permission to upload a KP video directly to Facebook). MySpace, on the other hand, was created specifically so that any person (let alone a band of people) with enough money to buy a guitar could easily and intuitively bury their friends’ MySpace inboxes in so many requests and event invitations that it would be impossible for those friends not to acknowledge that person’s possession of said guitar. All you needed was that ax and that MySpace, and you were set. Having three guitars, you can imagine how happily occupied with self-promotion I was back in the glory days when MySpace was still a thing.
Seriously though, while I was wasting time whining about the social networking changeover, I was totally forgetting about the vastly superior old school method of keeping fans in the loop: the e-mail list! The e-mail list used to be the main event for my bands (back in the pre-social networking era), and had I been employing that strategy all along, I wouldn’t have had to worry about losing touch with so many of the awesome people we met on MySpace.
Shame on me for slacking on my old school strategies!
No worries, though: the e-mail list is back!
Join the Kiera Plan e-mail list by typing your address into the form at the top right of this blog, and rest assured that we’ll stay in touch regardless of the social networking championship changing hands.
Bringing things back to the present, I’ll say that the site I’m really liking for band stuff right now is ReverbNation. This site does a great job of making itself user-friendly. For example, on the Kiera Plan ReverbNation page, you’ll find our music, YouTube videos, Facebook likability, Twitter updates, show calendar, e-mail list sign-up, and even this blog – all incorporated into one main page. Everything is right there, so you don’t need to go hunting. ReverbNation is easy for us, and it’s easy for you. Definitely check it out, especially if you enjoyed the old MySpace setup for bands and music.
To the Facebook-faithful, don’t worry: we’re not giving up on you or FB any time soon. And to anyone still on MySpace, feel free to hit us up! Unlike Facebook, MySpace actually gave bands an inbox, and we still check our messages.
For now, thanks for reading! You guys rule!
Shawn
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