Music fans picking Wikipedia over MySpace?

Lily Allen

Fans looking for band info reveal their web preferences

Mar 25, 2008
5 Comments
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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."

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Comments (5)

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nahnahnah

Mar 25, 2008

That's because MySpace's search, like most of its other functions, is utter gash. Never before has a website been so shit yet used by so many. It's about time they were dethroned and revealed for the junk-peddlers they are.

thelosthighway

Mar 25, 2008

The problem with myspace is that most bands don't give out their difinitive history and list of albums on their front page as opposed to wikipedia. If you have a myspace account and are searching for a band it can beome a bit fiddly in terms of other users using the same name as the band you are searching for, hence the search taking longer.

Ultimately though the myspace site contains the music and artistic outlay for the band.

croomian

Mar 25, 2008

people think MySpace is the best thing since sliced bread, but my slice is rotten!

the page loads are super slow, the graphics often throw off the page layout and a band's history for gigs and releases is often non-existent.

if it's just the facts i'm after, wikipedia is where i go to.