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Comment by anjc | Hacker News Reader

Am i wrong in saying that Myspace seemed to stay relevant for longer than it possibly should have purely because musicians and bands seemed to have an affection for it, for whatever reason? I know that even up until recently, when i've searched for local musicians, their Myspace page is still very high in search rankings, and i still often (somehow) find myself listening to local band's music via Myspace.

If they're going to put a focus in any area, for a redesign, it seems like music is the ticket.

As far as website designs go, this preview is stunning, even if it is just a mockup.

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Musicians like myspace because you can customize your homepage. And it's accepted to send invites to random people. On Facebook you don't have either of these. Also they added music friendly features such as letting users select your tune as their homepage theme song. As a musician I've found Myspace to be invaluable.

I think they face stiff competition from soundcloud. But a big problem with soundcloud is the amount of spammy bands that comment on songs and the lack of casual listeners like on myspace.

Customized homepages, random invites, and homepage theme songs: you basically just outlined the main reasons I stopped using Myspace.

As a musician, THIS can not be said enough!

Autoplaying music on any page, even a bands is a bad idea.

...because musicians and bands seemed to have an affection for it, for whatever reason?

You mean distribution agencies have an affection for it. Myspace has been around forever, so it comes up high on Google, so the guys in charge of putting St. Vincent's music online maintain her Myspace account in addition to her Facebook, iTunes, etc. The artists themselves don't really care, they just want to be everywhere that ears and eyeballs are.

As far as this preview goes, it looks very much like Windows 8. You can tell there's people still just throwing money at the Myspace name, which surprises me. I thought it was pretty much a dead brand.

There's nothing wrong with looking like Windows 8 at the moment!

Maybe it's okay to visually look like windows 8, but functionally it's looking like a complete disaster.

How so?

Let's wait and see. Keep in mind, the video is pretty frenetically cut. The video is designed to provoke awe, but I suspect the interface is less "out there" in practice.

The only functional problem with windows 8 metro I find is it's exclusiveness. I think windows 8 has a terrific UI for an application, just not for an OS. Give me windows 7 desktop where on the press of the windows key I get a windows 8 metro overlay like steam/xbox 360/ps3/etc, and I'd probably love it.

The big advantage of Myspace (for me) is that I can access the songs of bands much easier without logging in.

I still don't have a Facebook user - and myspace worked for me all the time without a user, but Facebook didn't work. It's the - "hey there is a show with some bands I don't know, let's go on Myspace and check them quickly out" - that Myspace excelled in. No login, just listening to some of their songs, maybe watch some pics, check out their tour dates and that's it.

But they have lost their edge - now everyone is on FB. But most of the bands still have a (mostly) unused Myspace profile.

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