March 25, 2008 11:30

Music fans picking Wikipedia over MySpace?

Fans looking for band info reveal their web preferences

New data collected by internet search engine Yahoo has revealed that music fans searching for information about bands choose to go a band's Wikipedia page rather than their MySpace page or official band website, despite MySpace offering streaming music from bands.

According to the data, after searching for a band name music fans head to a band’s Wikipedia page, searching there twice as often as they go to the band’s MySpace page.

The data results come despite the fact that MySpace claims to feature over three million band profiles with music, compared to Wikipedia’s “tens of thousands”.

Jay Walsh, communications manager for Wikipedia, said that website bosses were not considering adding music to artists’ pages on the site. "That's not what we're about," he said. "We're about knowledge. We're about bringing the reader to other free content – content they can use and enjoy without worrying about violating any copyrights."