It’s no secret that MySpace helped fuel the wizard rock explosion. In fact, I don’t think there are many wizard rock fans that can claim they DIDN’T spend at least a few sleepless nights constantly adding bands as friends and downloading new music when they first discovered wizard rock through MySpace. This is especially true for people who discovered wrock between 2006-2010.
In 2013, however, MySpace has gone the way of the dinosaur. It may be popular in some small areas, but as a social platform it’s been replaced by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. And it was truly the social aspect of MySpace that helped spread the word of wizard rock, and led to the formation of so many bands.
Up until mid-2008 or so, users could easily download the songs that bands uploaded to MySpace. Instead of having to sit at a PC with MySpace open and streaming, fans could simply download songs to their heart’s content, and in a few days have a giant wrock playlist that they could take with them wherever they went. Once MySpace eliminated that feature, fans could still get mp3s by purchasing them through outlets like iTunes, or by purchasing CDs from the bands directly. Some bands still opted to release their music freely by uploading it to file sharing sites, and placing the links on their MySpace pages.
MySpace is now undergoing another reinvention. It’s been sold off a few times, each time for a lesser price than its last sale. It’s current owners are really pushing hard for MySpace to once again be a destination for music fans, and looking to focus just on giving bands an outlet to reach new fans.
A huge looming issue is the potential removal of inactive pages on MySpace. Users can currently choose to log into either the old interface (which is incredibly bloated and slow), or the new interface. There are concerns from a number of places about what will happen when MySpace finally converts to the new interface on a full time basis – reports are already surfacing that users converting their profiles to the new MySpace are losing their old content, and some theorize that users may need to create an entirely new profile on the new system, losing their old profile entirely.
So, why is this an issue?
What if once MySpace completes it’s conversion to the “new” MySpace, it deletes old profiles or content? Maybe it’s done to pages that haven’t had a login in X amount of time, maybe it’s done when they send out a mass message telling users they have a certain timeframe to convert their own profiles over or risk losing them. Maybe MySpace will force everyone to create a brand new profile, and re-upload everything they had on their old profile.
With any of the above scenarios, there exists a pretty big risk that literally hundreds of wizard rock bands could lose their profiles, and would pull thousands of wizard rock songs offline, never to be heard again. Newer wrock fans would be robbed of the experience of hearing so many great diverse bands.
Is this going to happen? It would be a shame for wizard rock fans to suddenly lose access to countless great songs, and for bands that may be defunct to disappear as if they never existed. Some of those bands may not check their “band” email anymore, or even have access to it, or perhaps they long ago forgot their MySpace account credentials and have no plans to ever try and get them back. So if MySpace decides to remove old content for any reason, it’s very possible that all that wizard rock could disappear.
How does this affect us?
Are we, as a whole, responsible for preserving the history of wizard rock?
The idea of curating some sort of wizard rock archive has been around in various forms for a while, but now the importance of it may be a lot higher than it once was. In an ideal world, wizard rock fans would have access to an archive of mp3s from bands that are retired, defunct, etc. and don’t have their music available for sale (via CD, digital stores, etc.). This way, if MySpace does decide to remove old content, the songs are saved and wizard rock fans will still have access to them. Also, it’s a heck of a lot easier to have local files vs. having to stream them from a computer or phone.
Now, while the idea is a great one, the logistics behind it are a lot more complicated. For instance, how does the archive get copies of all of those songs? Ideally it would be from the bands themselves, as the sound quality would be the highest. But that brings another issue into play – if bands haven’t logged into their MySpace in years, and have no other contact information, how can they be reached to ask them about contributing?
Another option would be to rip the streams of the songs from MySpace in order to create an mp3. That option opens up a whole can of worms as far as morals are concerned. Would it be considered “stealing” the songs, if the band didn’t intend for them to be downloaded and never gave their permission for people to create local copies of the songs, even if they were never offered for sale or download? Along those lines, what if someone adds music to the archive that’s still for sale someplace? It’s again not fair for the band to lose money if they’re selling their albums and someone starts giving them away for free.
Storage is also part of the equation. Could one massive archive on someplace like archive.org be set up? The amount of space needed to store all these mp3s would be costly on a paid platform, and if for any reason THAT platform went away, then we’re right back to square one (if not worse).
We wanted to open this discussion up to everyone – both bands and fans of wizard rock. Do you think MySpace could potentially remove hundreds of old defunct wizard rock profiles, and the songs they contain? Should we investigate a way to create an archive of songs from bands that are retired? If so, how would you prefer it be accomplished? Again, there exists the real possibility that bands could not be contacted for either original files or permission to rip a stream of their songs, and that could cut down drastically in the number of songs in the archive. Long time fans may have copies of those songs, but would putting them in an archive without the band’s permission be poor form?
Please leave your thoughts and comments below, we’re very eager to hear your thoughts on this issue, and any potential steps we could take to preserve hundreds (if not thousands) of wizard rock songs for everyone if MySpace does indeed decide to remove old wizard rock band profiles.
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