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March 27, 2008
For Music Fans: Wikipedia > MySpace
MySpace may be a place for friends, but it is also a place for bands. Thosuands of them post information about themselves, list shows and stream music to the millions of users of the social networking giant.
However, according to Yahoo, fans look to Wikipedia for information about artists than to MySpace.
According to data provided to Billboard from Yahoo -- the second-most popular search engine on the Web after Google -- those searching for artist information are selecting the Wikipedia entry link over artists' MySpace pages by a factor of more than 2-to-1. The Wikipedia entries are also more popular than artists' Web sites.
This may seem surprising on the surface, but looking more closely, it makes sense. Unlike MySpace or a band (or label) website, Wikipedia's information is generally unbiased. When a fan searches for information on a band or artist, they are looking for information, not hype, and Wikipedia provides that.
"Wikipedia is a fantastic landing page," says Jason Feinberg, owner/president of On Target Media Group, a Web promotions consultancy. "It's so clear, so concise, and it's standardized. That's something I think is a draw over MySpace, where you never quite know the experience you're going to get. Is it going to be a horrible jumble of images and video and text that's difficult to read? Also, (Wikipedia is) rooted in fact. It's not promotional. Especially these days when the Internet is full of artists trying to essentially ram their message down your throat, I think a fan is a lot more receptive to a simple, no-hype approach."
Upon reading this, I immediately began to wonder how many Houston artists had Wikipedia pages. Not many. I did a very small search, but I only managed to find a couple.
The problem for a lot of bands is the process. You can submit a page, but it has to pass a set of standards Wikipedia refers to as the General Notability Guideline. This guideline requires that any person, place or thing submitted to Wikipedia must be "notable" and may acquire that notability through coverage in reliable, independent sources such as the Chronicle.
I've seen people attempt to get things listed in Wikipedia only to have them rejected because of the guidelines even though they would seem to meet the criteria, so it can be complicated, but it is obviously an avenue artists should look into given the popularity and credibility of the site in the eyes of fans.
Posted by Jeff Balke at March 27, 2008 01:47 PM
Comments
Wikipedia* is a tremendous help when I want to know more about a band. The articles may start as a labor of the author's love for the music, but in time they get refined into something a bit more standardized.
MySpace gets so tedious with the 'friending' and spam commenting. Helpful for the music samples, but otherwise it's a chore.
(*see also for Asian musicians/bands, the more specialized http://wiki.theppn.org/Main_Page)
Posted by: scott at March 29, 2008 01:20 PM