The advent of the internet brought the world many new conveniences to the public eye, including up-to-date news stories, weather forecasts, and sports scores. However, the latest trend in the technological age is social networking, especially for musicians and music lovers alike.
After the initial features of the web came out, the early 2000s marked the beginning of the transition to today’s Web 2.0, in which social networking sites like myspace.com, facebook.com, and last.fm have exploded in popularity among teenagers everywhere. This enormous wave of popularity has even reached the shores of Lakeview High School musicians. According to drummer of Lakeview artist Woodson, Ryan Harrison, “[social networking sites like Myspace.com] have much potential for promotion and discovering new music.” The concept of the social music web is this: connect people with similar musical interests, so that bands can spread their name by word mouth among fans of their given genre. Right now, this model seems to be working successfully; over 230 million fans and artists alike have signed up for some form of social networking. In fact, the web has changed the face of music so much that record labels are now looking at statistics from these websites, including plays, views, and fans, to determine whether or not a band has selling potential. “These days, if you’re a band and you don’t have a myspace, you’re losing a valuable tool for finding and communicating with fans,” said Harrison.