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With the recent news that Myspace has had to lay off nearly half of its workforce and with artists in ever greater numbers turning to Facebook, has Myspace finally lost its way?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few years you will be aware of the behemoth that Facebook has become. However, as a musician you might not be aware of the potential for your band. Traditionally Myspace has been the social media platform of choice for the up and coming U2s among us, but things have shifted somewhat and now is the time to consider using Facebook as well. We know that Facebook is not nearly as musician friendly as Myspace so why bother?

Simple, Facebook is now nearly double the size of Myspace so with all those people on there it's time to get your band up there too! Setting up a Facebook Band Page (formerly called Fan Pages) to promote your act is not as straight forward as Myspace but there are definite benefits. First, to set up a Facebook Band Page, you must already have (or you need to set up) a normal Facebook account. Once in your account, you can create ‘pages’ using the Page Manager under the 'Edit' feature.

At first look, the band pages share similar features with MySpace band pages: photo albums, fans (friends), videos, music player, The Wall (comments), and events (gig calendar). So why create another page on another social media network?

The Facebook Band Pages have a lot of additional features that MySpace doesn’t have:

• Mini-Feed, a quick look at what’s new on your page
• Fans can upload photos and videos to your page. 
• Discussion Boards allow you or your fans to discuss your music
• Discography: List your complete recorded history
• Admin Section: Allow others to manage your page. 
• Tracking: Facebook Pages utilize Insights, an analytics package that lets you track Page Views, Unique Views, Fans, New Fans, Removed Fans, Wall Posts, Discussion Topics, Reviews and Photo Views. You can also track your visitors by gender and age.

A couple of other notes about Facebook Band Pages: 

• If you already have Facebook friends, they must choose to become one of your fans. This is very handy  as you may want to keep your personnel profile separate while still promoting your music.
• You can message your friends (one at a time) or fans (all at once) with event updates or special messages.

In summary, Facebook Band Pages is a great way to reach out and communicate to the fans that MySpace may no longer reach. Setting up your pages takes a bit of time, but the maintenance is quick and easy. Since MySpace and Facebook have different demographics, it is definitely worth setting up a Facebook Band Page as well as maintaining your MySpace profile.

by Liam Carey @Bandpages