Something I said a while ago (Sept 15, 2007)

We all know Rupert Murdoch owns Myspace and, for some people, that's enough to give their profile the great, big piss-off. Over the past few years, however, social networking sites have become a crutch for venue owners - a crutch that alienates any band who doesn't want to fuck-around with these sites. Myspace is the most obvious example.
Before I explain, let me tell you a little about Rupert Murdoch.
After becoming a very successful media executive in his native Australia, he decided to globalize his assets (something that most people of the e-generation consider creepy and suspicious regardless of their politics, in spite of their own Google-oriented lives). The globalization started in the UK. He bought the British periodical, The News of the World, which was the single most read English language publication in the world, at the time. He sold his shares in his Australian companies to afford the buy-out of the paper. Once he was at the helm of TNOTW, he reclaimed his Australian assets, buying them out from under the people he sold them to.
From there, he bought another British paper, The Sun. Once his acquisition of The Sun had been made, he converted the entire publication to a tabloid format. This meant that the news could be more easily filtered because its circulation was less frequent than a daily paper and, although weekly, it had fewer pages. Not to mention the fact that tabloids focus on entertainment news and gossip, giving the publishers an even larger opportunity to isolate their readers from the world, what's going on and, ultimately, the truth.
Just in time for the Thatcher era, Murdoch bought the Times and The Sunday Times, giving him control of over almost all printed news, in the United Kingdom.
Once Thatcher was out of office, by the way, he became chummy with Tony Blair. Murdoch's media control may be attributed to Blair's success. To ice the cake, there was an ongoing scandal, in the UK, because Blair often included Murdoch in secret discussions about national policy.
Although Blair is, technically, a member of the Labour Party, in England, many people lost their jobs. The unions rioted, but to no avail. Murdoch introduced the automated, electric method of newspaper printing, used across the world, that can be credited to greatly reducing the manpower required to print a newspaper. Cost reducing, I suppose, but I haven't seen prices do anything but plateau, climb and plateau, again.
With the profits he accumulated from screwing so many Brits out of a living, he moved to America and bought the San Antonio Express-News. Then he founded the Star (that b.s. tabloid you see, at drugstores). He went on to purchase the New York Post, which, when founded by Alexander Hamilton, was a political broadsheet. Over the years, the tabloid has changed and become another giant, winding gossip column. Thanks, Rupert.
Maybe it was the tabloids that lent him the idea of numbing the public mind, but around that time he started buying the shit out of television properties. He bought Fox. He bought British Satellite Broadcasting and gained control of almost the entire British pay television market.
He went on to buy two record labels, in Australia. He merged them and gave them to his son.
Rupert Murdoch is one of very few multinational media execs who makes the decided effort to retain the major controlling stake in all of the companies under his gaze, by keeping everything in his family. This means almost every part of his empire is managed by a family member who, of course, answers to him.
Since all of this, he's bought the controlling stock in DirecTV, most Asian media and Intermix (the former owners of Myspace) and IGN.
Many credit Murdoch as being a GOP man. He was friends with the Regans, Pat Robertson and George Bush. But he also backed Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign for senate. He's also worked with third party groups, like the Libertarians.
If you ask me, his across-the-board interest in worldwide media and politics has nothing to do with conservatism. I'd say it had to do with his specific vision for the world. He wants a world that thinks and behaves his way. I really can't think of a businessman more megalomaniacal than him.
Keeping your Myspace profile is nurturing that power. Not only are you giving him a healthy stake in the youth culture that he previously had very little access to, but you're creating a system in the music scene that is completely dependent on his services. You are helping create a monopoly that reaches as deep as the local bands - unsigned acts.
Many venues, now, require you to have a Myspace profile, if they're even going to consider you. Not just so they can hear your demo, but so they can gauge how many people will attend one of your shows. Any band's music player shows daily plays, which really help venue owners make a more educated guess as to whether you're a viable risk, because it's a little more obvious how many kids have heard of you and are likely to go to a show with your name is on the bill. Honestly, although I have very mixed feelings about the method, it makes sense and it's very helpful.
But Myspace is not about music. It used to be. But, now and forever, it is a social networking site built around advertising. By depending on Myspace to book shows, bands and venues are setting up a monopoly, in an area of American culture that has, for the most part, retained a uniquely D.I.Y. approach for the last 30 years. It was spontaneous and alive and, although it had its failures, that was a large part of its success.
If you're going to use the internet to help with booking, do it old school. It's cheaper and easier to build your own website. Put your music up there. Put counters on the links of your songs. Create an on-site fan network for your band. Sure, it might be the same, in principal, but it's at least under your control and you can say you're the only one who owns the rights to the images and music on that page, which greatly reduces the risk of it becoming about much of anything other than the music.
If you want to use networking sites to do booking, fine. I can't argue with everybody that doesn't go out of their way to suit my out-of-date, knee-jerk, punk-rock sensibilities. But, seriously, ditch Myspace. We're setting the music scene up to be a wellfare state of Rupert Murdoch.
When you're dependent on something, you're in a position to be controlled. Once Rupert Murdoch's research and development team finds out how many venues are depending on Myspace, he will control them. In one way or another.

If you need me to put it in perspective for you, think of Myspace as Ticketmaster's still, small voice.

The do-it-yourself spirit of young people, even when that spirit is at odds with their own habits, is what makes the powerful figures on this planet nervous. Twelve-year-olds start their own charitable organizations. High school dropouts start magazines, record labels and clothing companies. Twenty-something musicians create a nationwide sense of solidarity for teenagers who feel otherwise alienated. In fact, entertainment and entertainers seem to be the cultural glue that bind the youth together. Entertainment is a zeitgeistal, motivational network for the youth of the "civilized world". More people voted for 2004's American Idol than they did for president. Retaining control over small, local shows may not seem like any kind of real issue but, when you take the power of entertainment into account, it is. The disassembly of a d.i.y. culture, like the local/unsigned music scene, would be a tremendous blow to the overall d.i.y. spirit of young people . . . and Rupert Murdoch has already received part of the message. He isn't unaware of his power potential over pop culture and youth culture. After all, the Fox network does own American Idol.