The Daily O’Collegian

In the past, bands counted on live performances to showcase their talent and gain a few new fans. Today, more rely on social Web sites like MySpace and Facebook to get their music heard.

The past 10 years have brought forth a magnitude of useful creations, such as reality TV shows, YouTube, the iPhone and Kraft Easy Mac.

But possibly the most monumental innovation in the past decade has been social networking sites.

Web sites such as Myspace and Facebook have shaped communication and interaction in the new millennium. However, one of the greatest impacts of these sites can be seen in the independent music industry.

Before sites like MySpace Music were created, bands relied on shows and word of mouth to get their music out.

Now bands can start a Myspace account, post a few songs and start adding friends.

The members of local band Colourmusic created a MySpace profile soon after the band was formed.

Colin Fleishacker and Nick Ley said they have seen firsthand the benefits of having the site.

“It’s been a great tool for us,” Fleishacker said.

“We can find fans in places we’ve never even played before. We have people from Australia and England that know who we are.”

Fleishacker said they have even had people from places as far as Israel message them on MySpace about their music.

Colourmusic also got a boost from The Flaming Lips who endorsed the band in a Myspace bulletin.

The band had more than 12 pages of friend requests when it checked an hour later, and decided to do something that not many bands would.

“We divided up the pages [of friend requests],” Ley said, “And we wrote each person back with something unique to them like, ‘Hey Phil! I like your Chihuahua.’”

The guys from Colourmusic also came up with an idea to create anonymous female profiles for themselves as an advertising tool.

“We would get requests from guys over MySpace and we would say back, ‘Hey you know I really like this band that my friend is in called Colourmusic,’” Ley said.

“We thought we were brilliant, but we ended up only getting like 5 friends out of it before we stopped.”

But it isn’t just bands that are using social networking sites to their advantages.

Vault Video has a MySpace page for both its video store and its concert venue.

“[Networking sites] make it so easy for you,” owner David Christopher said.

“What are people going to do when they go home? I can tell you what my staff does, and that’s get on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.”

Cindy Christopher, part-owner of Vault Video, said it makes sense as a marketing tool.

“The generation that we are trying to market to has grown up on social networking,” she said, “The fact that it doesn’t cost us anything makes the return on investment enormous.”

Carter Hulsey fronts Sounding the Silence, an independent one-man band from Joplin, Mo., that played at Vault Video on Tuesday.

“I book entirely through Myspace,” Hulsey said.

“I had a show [Monday] in Tulsa and I’m heading to Dallas, and I needed an in-between place. I was lucky enough to find [Vault Video] as a place to play on a Tuesday night, which isn’t very easy.”

Solo artist Anna Kinder from nearby Perkins has used experiences on Facebook to inspire one of her songs named, “Response.”

“I have a stalker on Facebook. We only know each other through mutual friends, but he messages me and leaves things on my car,” Kinder said.

“He got mad at me and told me I didn’t know what love was… so I wrote a song kind of in response to that.”

Social networking changed the art of music marketing.

Cindy Christopher said the power of the sites is incredible.

“On concert posters, people used to look for name if the band, the venue and the date of the concert,” she said. “Now people see the posters and look for a MySpace page.”