Teenagers adore it. Young adults use it to pass the time at lame desk jobs and track down people from their past. Predators use it to zero in on potential victims. Parents fear it more than any parent feared the Beatles and Elvis's gyrating hips combined, and other people just think it's a stupid waste of time and energy. So what could possibly make MySpace useful beyond worldwide Internet distraction?

Music, that's what.

Before the dawn of the Internet age, when everybody suddenly fancied themselves an expert in web site design, musicians looking to promote their work had to do so through analog means: demo tapes, flyers, performances at artist showcases, etc. And just because they got a gig or found an A&R exec who’d bite doesn’t mean they’d have the one thing that can keep a musician’s career going for a long time: fans.

The digital revolution made it easy to upload tracks to a server and put them on the Internet, where everybody has access to them. But band web pages required at least rudimentary HTML skills, and not everyone broke down and bought a copy of HTML for Dummies. Now, anybody with a few tracks, a computer, and an Internet connection can create a self-promotion music page thanks to the controversial juggernaut of a social networking site, MySpace.

A few months ago, I received a MySpace message from Karl Miles, a former high school classmate who I’ve been out of touch with for 7 years, asking me to go to his MySpace Music page and check out his tracks. He's starting a career as a solo folk artist and found me through the magic of MySpace. He wanted to know what I thought of his music so I went to his profile and listened to his tracks, played through the built-in mini player. Since he made them available for free I was also able to download them, save them to my computer, and play them for my friends.

Karl admits that part of the attraction to MySpace was its ease of use, having put off setting up a "real" site for far too long. And he doesn't subscribe to the delusion that MySpace will make him famous. "I find an open mic will generate more attention," he says. "It is more likely a person will hear about me some where else and check if I'm on MySpace." He certainly doesn't believe that MySpace is an easy way out of a musician's traditional struggle to be heard. "You still have to do leg work, play gigs," he says. "If you get a buzz outside MySpace maybe you can get one on MySpace. But I don't think MySpace will create one for you on its own."

Ezra Caraeff, owner of Portland-based indie label Slowdance Records, sees many bands are not as realistic as Miles. Instead they believe that a MySpace page and 400,000 friends is a quick ticket to Mick Jagger status. "I think a lot of bands think friends equal sales," he explains. "But those are the same bands who think emailing me to 'check them out' or 'you should sign us, we RoCk' [sic] is a good idea as well."

The problem with MySpace for many hopeful musicians is that the "adding friends" feature creates a false sense of audience, and with that false sense comes an inflated perception of fame. There are actually programs that crawl MySpace on a band’s behalf and add friends at random, an act equivalent to email spamming. "Since it's so lawless," says Caraeff, "it's a chance for these unknown bands to be on an even plane with known artists. Like, we don't have a record or play shows, but we have as many friends as Hoobastank." Caraeff also worries that the meaning of the word “friend” will be forever corrupted by the MySpace “friend” system.

Yet despite this grand delusion factor, Ezra's label insists that all of their artists have MySpace pages, most of which are maintained by interns. Even his label itself has a page, and Slowdance has used the bulletin feature to reach bands' audiences—although Ezra still thinks email blasts are more direct and consequently much more effective. A blog post on the profile—which touts the label as the "Best. Label. Ever."—begs musicians not to spam them with requests to listen to their tracks.

As the head of a label, Caraeff sees the proliferation of bands with little talent but a lot of friends as just another stage in the evolution of the music industry. "My brother used to work at Capitol Records and I remember going there when I was in like 10th grade and seeing crates of demos in this dumpster," he reminisces. "It's a very sobering thing. MySpace reminds me of that on a daily basis… so much delusion."

But not every band that’s active on MySpace is mired in delusion. One band that has found success via the Internet is Saosin, a post-hardcore band who got their start by posting tracks to a variety of Internet music forums. Their tracks caught on, and their first show was jammed with kids clamoring to see the band they'd heard on the Internet. They now have a deal Capitol Records and just finished their third Warped Tour.

Saosin maintains a MySpace page. In an interview with bassist Chris Sorensen he made it clear that the guys in the band actually use it. Part of the fun for Chris is the ability to listen to a band’s tracks on one page and then “go check out some hot babe’s page.” The band’s page boasts over 178,000 friends and actual band members answer messages.

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