.Editorial - MySpace & Me
Metal Reviews

Release year: 2010
Reviewed by Goat

It's time for a rant, which I make no apology for - everyone should be able to have a good whine about something from time to time, and whilst my particular subject today may seem a little like a rejected Curb Your Enthusiasm plotline, it's something that has pushed my patience to the limit. I can't hold back any longer; this festering open wound on the face of the internet has got away with it for far too long. Yes, MySpace is the worst web site in existence – yes, worse than 4chan, worse than ‘goatse’ or whatever hilarious and pornographic practical joke is in these days, worse than the admittedly dire Facebook. Up until now, MySpace’s benefits have outweighed its many faults, since it’s the easiest and fastest way to check a band’s music out, but I’ve noticed a recent phenomenon which has caused me to seriously consider deleting the official MetalReviews MySpace page (what, you didn’t know? www.myspace.com/metalreviewsofficial) and to cease putting band MySpace links in my reviews. It’s a simple problem, but a serious one, and one that has already caused multiple bands to lose my potential patronage. What is it?

Auto-playing tracks in the comment sections.

Yep, there you are, having already battled your way through a slow, visually ugly site, checked your user-unfriendly spam-filled inbox on the off chance that someone has sent you an actual, you know, message, gone to a band’s ugly, slow, painfully annoying advertising billboard to hear their music, and what happens? Another track starts playing in the background, generally some godawful rap demo that completely and utterly ruins the band you’re trying to hear. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to throw some Wu Tang Clan or Beastie Boys on from time to time, but nothing is worse than these infuriating spam merchants and their terrible music that they are forcing you to listen to like some fascist authoritarian out of The Clockwork Orange. By allowing these self-publicising whores to control what you’re listening to, MySpace have stopped being a necessary evil and just become plain evil. It is usually impossible to find said track playing in the comments and hit the stop button, and after trying in vain the first couple of times, now I generally don’t bother – yep, all you Metal bands out there, by failing to police your comment thread you have failed to gain that extra smidgeon of publicity which MetalReviews.com provides, and it is as much your fault as MySpace’s.

Any sensible internet user would avoid MySpace anyways since said comments could just as easily contain a piece of Malware rather than an annoying song, but such is the chance we take to check bands out before purchasing their albums. Of course, this means that now you are less likely to get a harmful piece of software illegally downloading a band’s latest album than you are by visiting their MySpace. The music business in action, ladies and gentlemen, in all its bloated, resplendent glory, like some grotesque Whore of Babylon perched precariously over our underground metal scene.

Yet what practical measures can we everyday users take to combat this? Well, aside from complaining to MySpace as I already have done, sending a polite message to the sinister Tom (and receiving the unhelpful suggestion that I send them the artist name in question) I pledge from now on to fully check a band’s MySpace page before linking to it in the review I’m writing, and if it contains these self-playing abominations to send them a pissy message about it AND deliberately not to link to it. It’s a small step, but if we can persuade MySpace to change their rules to disallow self-playing comments, then that will be a small battle won – the next time you’re browsing MySpace and come across one of these, complain! Complain to Tom, to the band, send emails to everyone you know and start a movement to drag MySpace away from the pit it teeters over, that of complete chaos, where you can’t hear the band you want to for the rampant hordes of others all deliberately selling themselves and their crappy music at once. In the long run, hopefully a new way of listening music will become popular enough to effect a complete switch from MySpace – in the meantime, let’s make our time spent on this necessary evil as painless as possible.

Killing Songs :
Goat quoted
Other albums by .Editorial that we have reviewed:
.Editorial - Horny For Harpsichord reviewed by Ben and quoted
.Editorial - Why I need to take a break from writing for MetalReviews reviewed by Alex and quoted
.Editorial - USA / Germany Thrash Match: Big Four Style reviewed by Ben and quoted
.Editorial - Re: Reissues and Remasters reviewed by Ben and quoted
.Editorial - A Brief Run Through Power Metal (in 3 1/2 stages) reviewed by Ben and quoted
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