Dominator

The success and failure of online social interaction within social groups can be measured (similarly to other new inventions) by the efficiency of "The Dominant Response" as termed by behaviourist Kenneth Spence. These behaviours are extremely well learned responses and the most likely used in any given situation.

The Dominant responses are usually wrong when learning new tasks, hence the difficulties encountered when using chopsticks - if a knife and fork is the usual utensil of choice. Dominant responses work very well when used in familiar situations, from this we can draw the conclusion that the more intuitively familiar society is with a new concept/invention the more it will gravitate towards it. Confirmation of this is demonstrated by the huge success of the E-Mail (a response to letter writing and posting) and also the success of iTunes' (www.apple.com/itunes) digital downloading portal, whose user page (a list of song/artist/album) is a legal replication of the outlawed Sean Fanning's Napster page (www.napster.co.uk). Napster was the first file sharing site where many emerging communities shared illegal files, but more importantly acquired the skill set for downloading music.

Myspace was invented in 2003 and by 2006 it was the leading social networking site. It was highly interactive platform where you could make friends, post comments and leave personal messages. Myspace's effective audio-video upload system was used by artists as a great platform to show off their work and gain communal friends and fans. It soon became the place to hear new bands and discover new music online. However by 2008, based on the numbers of monthly unique visitors, statistics revealed it had been overtaken by Facebook (www.facebook.com) as the primary online social networking tool.

I would suggest Facebook usurped Myspace as the number 1 social networking site simply because it catered to some very familiar and acquired end user skill sets that Myspace failed to uptake, such as real time interaction and updates, but ultimately it was its superior functional interface with the inherent ease of accessibility for group interaction that dealt Myspace the deadly blow. Other factors cited were crash and privacy problems.

The downsizing trend in surveys with regards to MySpace is not the downfall of music consumption, but the downfall of social networking on MySpace as a social platform. Furthermore, MySpace fundamentally failed to address familiar and acquired end user skill sets, social patterns and group behaviors.

How will this effect the artist?

Myspace for now still remains a great business card for artists within the industry and its user decline is not as widespread in the USA (the largest music market). However now that its social networking status is in decline, Rupert Murdoch will no doubt focus his attention onto new solutions in order to salvage a return on his $1/2 biillon investment. I assume he will use Myspace data (gained over the years) and turn Myspace into a major music store with streaming capabilities. To achieve this and succeed he must incorporate user dominant responses, and acquired user skill sets from leading stores like iTunes and Last FM.

Please see information below from Wikepedia about the new features added in the redesign of the new Myspace music page

"MySpace has recently redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. These new features include the users' ability to create playlists, resembling the functions of Last.fm and other social music websites, along with the popular Project Playlist that popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes and Napster. Starting in March 2010, because of music licensing rights, MySpace Music has turned into a music store and only allows to play 30 second samples for signed artists".