OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture

Introduction: The Brand Politics of Consuming Publics

[ xiii ] Introduction The Brand Politics of Consuming Publics Marketing is now the instrument of social control and produces the arrogant breed who are our masters. —Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations America is no longer a country. It’s a multitrillion-dollar brand . . . America™. —Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam Rupert Murdoch knows a good thing when he sees it. In July 2005, the media mogul purchased MySpace.com for $580 million, a move that many suspected would sound the death knell for the hipster socialnetworking site. MySpace had risen, in just two short years, to the upper echelon of the Internet—despite the fact that many people (especially those over thirty) had never heard of it. MySpace was founded in 2003 by Web entrepreneurs Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. At the time Murdoch’s News Corporation (News Corp) bought MySpace’s parent company, Intermix Media, MySpace was the third-most-visited site on the Web.1 It had more members than America Online (AOL) and more overall hits than Google and eBay combined. MySpace boasts over 50 million members, with new members joining at a rate of 150,000 per day. MySpace’s innovative mix incorporates “elements from other sites popular with the young: the instant-messenger capabilities of America Online, the classifieds of Craigslist.com, the invitation service of Evite.com and [ Introduction xiv ] the come-hither dating profiles of match.com.”2 What seems to have been crucial to MySpace’s success is that all of its elements are woven together by the thread of indie rock, meaning its public is composed of the holy grail of marketing demographics—sixteen- to thirty-four-year-olds.3 Rupert Murdoch knows a good thing when he sees it. For the half-million bands with profiles on the site, MySpace has provided the tools for a kind of open source marketing, allowing up-andcoming acts to gain far more exposure than they ever could under the traditional big-label/big-radio approach to distribution. “It’s become the new paradigm,” says one musician. “At first I thought, ‘Why would people randomly go to our site?’ But that’s the way it works. People are actively searching out new bands on MySpace. It’s an experimental marketing tool right now. I don’t know if it translates to record sales or getting heads to a show, but it’s exceeded my expectations as far as getting us exposure .”4 One successful club promoter in Los Angeles is also enjoying the benefits of MySpace membership: “I conduct my entire business through MySpace,” he says. “I haven’t made a flyer in years” but he is nonetheless seeing fans line up around the block to see the shows he promotes.5 MySpace allows bands, solo acts, and promoters to post song and video clips, tour schedules, pictures, and blogs on the site, all free of charge. As a result, many acts have enjoyed huge success, just through MySpace; in fact, the site has produced its own kind of star system. And it’s not only small up-starts capitalizing on the MySpace phenomenon. Indie-rock veterans such as Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, Billy Corgan (of Smashing Pumpkins fame), and Weezer have all used MySpace as a venue for promoting albums before they landed in stores, on Amazon, or on iTunes. REM even launched its 2004 album Around the Sun exclusively on MySpace. As a venue for rock bands in search of a following, MySpace provides a grassroots alternative to MTV, which has largely given itself over to reality programming and hip-hop.6 Virgil Dickerson, who owns the independent label Suburban Home Records, told the New York Times, “I’d say, as a cultural phenomenon, MySpace is as important, if not more important, than MTV.”7 Tom Anderson, the younger and more visible of the two MySpace founders (every new member is immediately granted the privilege of automatically becoming one of “Tom’s friends”), has launched MySpace Records in order to tap into the huge population Introduction ] [ xv of unsigned acts. As he meets with bands, he says that many ask, “How are you going to get me onto MTV?” “They don’t quite get it, and I’m only starting to get it myself,” says Anderson. “We’ve got our 26 million, with a lot more people logging in each day. . . . It’s kind of like, who cares...