During my days in the radio and music business, I had heard repeatedly that the music you listen to between the ages of 15-24 will be the music you listen to for the rest of your life.  If you are in your thirties or forties or older now, and you look at your music collection, do you find that to be true?  Odds are that you are not buying as much or listening to as much NEW music as what you did during those years.  I think 80% of us would admit that the music we enjoyed during high school, college and our early adult years is likely to be the music we will take to the grave with us.  When they put my stinky body in the ground, I want two songs played, one by The National that just came out in 2008 and one by Bob Seger that came out  when I was 15.

This dual study, surveying nearly 5,000 people,  shows that 75% of people between the ages of 18-24 and 57% of people between the ages of 25-34 have social network profiles (MySpace, Facebook and Twitter being at the top of the list). The take home here, for all you musicians, is that is THE core music loving/listening/buying audience. MySpace is popular with music lovers and the youngsters because those two “demographics” are usually one in the same.

In a prior music news post this week I mentioned how Facebook’s traffic trend is significantly better than MySpace’s.  But the other reality is that MySpace still has more users and those users are, on average younger than the current Facebook crowd.  Again, the suggestion is not that you should pick just one, but that you should be aware of the trends and get your music to where the music loving/buying/touring fans actually are.  Establishing important connections to people in this age group today will mean many years of support as you both age together.  Need proof?  Go see the Stones or Bruce Springsteen live.  This study is very positive news for those of you already making the connections on all the social networks.

-pjc

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Brian Solis, big thinker, co-founder of the Social Media Club and author a great book called Now is Gone, was the first to report on the fact that, for the first time ever, traffic to Facebook surpassed MySpace this past December.

In his blog post from this past Tuesday, Mr. Solis reveals that the popularity of social network, Facebook, reached 2.18% of all Internet visits on this past Christmas Eve. While this could have been the season to wish you and yours a holly, jolly seasons greetings, it was also a more ominous sign for long time social front runner MySpace. While the traffic to MySpace is not yet even close to an exodus from their 76 million users, this chart on Compete shows that the trend is not certainly not making very positive gains over their accomplishments in 2007. It actually shows MySpace.com traffic down nearly 10%. Has MySpace run out of gas? How many new friends have you added in the past six months? What new innovations have you been excited about that have you drawn you or your friends back to MySpace?

This is the point when you say, “Yeah, but Facebook doesn’t get my music heard.” This morning’s post by TechCrunch’s Micheal Arrington, called How Warner Music Killed Facebook Music, is a must read. This post provides some very important behind-the-scenes details of the efforts that this highly popular social network in taking on in order to get music into the lives of their 55 million users. While there are already several Facebook music apps, obviously a solution provided by the network itself will gain much greater acceptance over plug-ins and strap-ons.  Or is that strap-on and plug in?

This morale of this short story, and the reason for highlighting these two new Facebook trends, is to remind independent musicians and bands of one VERY important element. Social Networks need people and keeping people happy these days is not an easy job – ask any retailer. Your task is to follow those people who are likely interested in you and your music. Capture your friends, fans and followers by getting email addresses and zip/postal codes. If you cannot reach out and touch your tribe with a simple email message, then you are relying on technology that is not as social or as beneficial as you might believe. If MySpace, Twitter OR Facebook closed down tomorrow, what tangible information do you have on your following?  This is an important question and one that will likely require action from you and your band mates.

-pjc