Customer Reviews

MySpace Music Marketing: How to Promote & Sell Your Music on the World's Biggest Networking Web Site

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Is this book useful? Somewhat. Is it worth the price? Doubtful. Could it have been a WHOLE lot better? Absolutely.

What a great subject for a book. I was immediately drawn in by the title. Just what I was looking for; an entire book on how to get the most out of your MySpace music page. If only that's what was actually inside. This book does tell you how to get MORE out of your page, but in no way does it tell you how to get the MOST out of your page. Missing is any information about how to customize your page, how the entire MySpace process works, illustrations of good and bad pages, etc. What you do get is some pretty basic music marketing advice - mostly rehashed from the author's other books - but placed within the context of the MySpace domain. What you also get are snippets and quotes from other musicians and artists who have used and been successful in the MySpace music world. But, as you can imagine whenever you interview many, many, many different sources on a very narrow topic, you end up getting the same advice over and over and over again.

In summary, I would say that this book reads more like a web newsletter than a useful, well organized, well thought-out book on how to use MySpace music. Maybe that's all it was meant to be. But to me, it could have, and should have, been so much more. I read it in an hour, got about as much out of it as I would a good web forum, and put it on my shelf where I'm certain it will sit untouched until it is thoroughly obsolete.

I had higher hopes.

'How to get the most from your MySpace promotion' reads the promiss on the backcover of the book. But this promiss is certainley NOT true at all. Bob Baker wrote only 48 pages of the book himself, which text is a summary of the results of a questionaire done by Bob through MySpace. The other 70 pages or so are written by '30 indie music people' (how about giving them a credit on the cover of the book, Bob?). These are the raw, full length responses from the 30 artists, managers and promotors who responded to Baker's MySpace Music Marketing Tips survey. Therefore, the following 4 boring questions are repeated 30 times:
- General thoughts on MySpace as a promotion tool;
- Top MySpace marketing tips;
- Biggest MySpace drawbacks;
- Additional MySpace thoughts.
You do not need to buy the book, because here are the results:
- yes, MySpace can be a promotional tool for a band, besides other promotional tools;
- blog, blog, blog (be active);
- there are over 2 million artists you are competing with;
- MySpace is super time-intesive and the site is very very slow.
That's it. I certainley do not understand the halleluja-words on the backcover of the book.

If you're starting from zero this is the guide. A couple of nuggets but otherwise, a boring read.

I bought this great book by Bob Baker when I first began setting up our MySpace site, and I'm so glad I did! Not only is "MySpace Music Marketing" concise and to the point, it's easy to read and to understand and it provides invaluble information to make the most out of your MySpace site.

The book focuses on using MySpace to promote your band and music, expand your fan base etc. And I can see the value of the fantastic information and advice in the book for bands and artists.

As a non-performing songwriter, I still found this book to be a great tool because even though I don't need thousands of fans on my Friends list, I do want a select, intimate group of music professionals who I can focus on developing real working relationships with. I used the information in the book to begin acheiving this and I'm really pleased with the results.

Using the effective advice in the book has MORE THAN DOUBLED the traffic to our official website in the six weeks since I set up the site using Bob's book. That's exciting stuff!

I highly recommend Bob Baker's "MySpace Music Marketing" to anyone with a MySpace site, and especially to bands, artists and songwriters who want to promote their work in an effective and explosive way! Its a must read.

Lisa Butler
Imaginotion Songs

[..]

I bought this book a short time ago and am still reading. Even though I've been doing website work for almost a decade and am quite proficient in the ins and outs of Myspace, this book is *really* a useful tool for my band. In the first hour of reading it I made approximately a dozen changes to our Myspace profile and band website which will make a significant impact on our internet presence as a whole. The book does a lot for beginners but also does something that is critical for performing musicians - it points out a lot of things we tend to miss because of the mindset we as musicians tend to maintain and the direction we market from. It also points out some of the downsides and dangers of Myspace marketing so you can avoid them or use them to an advantage.

The book also walks you through the process of starting a myspace profile with the goal of band marketing in mind and takes it from there. Whether you're just starting out or experienced in the functions of myspace, this book serves as an eye-opener to a variety of options you may have overlooked in your quest to make fans out of strangers.

This brief book is great if you're just starting out marketing music on MySpace and are unfamiliar with how the site works -- there's a lot here that could increase your confidence and give you a strong start. But if you already have a MySpace site and have developed a decent comfort level with it, won't do much for you. I bought it hoping to get more tips and tricks to take a MySpace music page to the next level, but there wasn't much I hadn't already figured out on my own. But if I'd had it when starting out I would have gotten up to speed a lot faster.

It's somewhat repetitive -- over half the book is "A Survey of 30 Indie Music People," and predictably a lot of them say the same things. But again, it's a good resource for those getting started, especially those who don't feel particularly Web-savvy.

I have recently been purchasing many of Bob Baker's wonderful books! They are ALL VERY concise, informative and very easy to understand. The "MySpace Music Marketing" book has so many ways for the indie musician to 'get ahead' in the business. I recommend this book and ANY of Bob's other if you are serious about your music career.

This book is ONLY good if you have never heard of myspace and if you are brand new to it. Half the book is actually advice from other artists about how to maximize your myspace. Not bad, but did the author really have to rely on other people to provide most of his content?

I bought the book and I finished it in less than a day. The font is big since there isn't much information in this book. If you really want to learn, do a simple web search. Otherwise, spend your money elsewhere.

I bought this book looking for a complete resource to marketing with myspace for bands and music videos. It's really directed towards a more beginner user to myspace. The book has some good notes and guidelines here and there, but nothing extraordinary. There is a lot of redundancy in the survey section too. I'd recommend the book to musicians who are new to myspace and marketing. Overall, not a bad read, just not enough juicy info as hyped.

I am a guitarist, songwriter and now a myspace artist. I bought this book before I even had a myspace page. And I'm glad I did so. This book has lots of tips that would probably have taken me a long time to figure out on my own. It is a detailed step-by-step guide to exactly what a band or artist needs to do from the very beginning with their myspace page. One thing you have to remember is that marketing, including myspace music marketing, is not an exact science. But this book guides you on how to target and connect with the people on myspace who are most likely to become your fans and spread the word about your music.

Just do a search on my name and visit my myspace page if you want to see how I've used the advice and suggestions in this book to create my own buzz on myspace.

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