Wikipedia beats MySpace - For music fans seeking artist information
By Dave Parrack
The Internet has been a mixed bag for musicians. Often blamed wholeheartedly for destroying album sales due to the ease of obtaining pirated copies, the World Wide Web can also be a force for good, bringing a group or singer a whole new set of fans who wouldn’t have heard of them otherwise.
When you first listen to a new band or singer and like what you hear, the next obvious step is to find out more about them: Where they’re from, how long they’ve been around, their biggest hits etc. But where on the Web is best to get that kind of information?
Put any artist’s name in to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo! and the chances are the top three results will be their official Website, their MySpace page, and their entry on Wikipedia. And it’s the latter which most people now turn to for their facts and figures.
According to a recent study by Yahoo and Billboard reported by Reuters, music fans are choosing the Wikipedia entry link over artists own MySpace pages by a factor of more than 2-to-1. Wikipedia also comes out as more popular than the official Websites.
Yahoo head of programming and label relations John Lenac says:
“The interest that people had to go to MySpace to find out more about their favorite band is waning in favor of going to Wikipedia.”
The problem is a lot of artists aren’t taking the opportunity to exploit the popularity of Wikipedia, as while they spend time and money on a snazzy looking Website, and make sure their MySpace page is regularly updated and well maintained, few take any notice of what is being said about them on Wikipedia.
As to why new fans are choosing Wikipedia over MySpace or official Websites. It probably comes down to the fact that Wikipedia is impartial, and not just there for promotional purposes.
There is also the fact that with Wikipedia, you know exactly what you are going to get when you click a link. An official Website could be basic or flash heavy, have lots of statistics, or just tour dates. While the MySpace page could end up being an almost unreadable jumble of ineligible text and images, songs, and fan comments which everyone could do without.
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March 25th, 2008
Wikipedia is seriously flawed. Way too much unreferenced and unverified rubbish in the articles.