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Comment by mambodog | Hacker News Reader

I think Myspace still has the band/musician space, largely because what Myspace allows and Facebook doesn't (restyling the page, embedded music player) are pretty necessary to artists asserting their brand identity. Which is really the main reason for them to have a presence.

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Take a look at Bandcamp, it's the last nail in MySpace's coffin.

Main page, http://www.bandcamp.com/

Random couple of artist pages for an indication of the customization available, never mind the billing and music serving back end.

http://redfang.bandcamp.com/ http://danielaspector.bandcamp.com/

The problem I see with Bandcamp is that there's no discovery portion of it. If you already know of an artist, it's great, but you can't stumble across some new artist like you can on MySpace.

Not to be sarcastic, but there is the whole internet full of tools to point people at your Bandcamp or MySpace page, in fact that's what people are doing for their MySpace music pages, promoting them on Facebook and in some cases writing their address on bathroom walls.

Also, there is something to be said for doing a single thing and doing it well. Managed hosting of musicians websites and nothing else.

If anything this is the year of overshoot, Google wants to be Facebook, Facebook wants to be Twitter (still), the Sixty One decided to be more like a glossy magazine.

Everyone wants to be your single source, conveniently forgetting that this is the internet we are talking about and not the cable or phone company.

"Bandcamp"?

Are they targeting the nerd market with that name?

It's a catchy name. They were smart to jump on it. One of the bands I linked is pretty heavy grunge metal and the other is an international singer songwriter, so I think their net is pretty wide.

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