A major youth Internet hub used by 54 million people is changing the face of music marketing. With five million new members a month, a word-of-mouth recommendation on MySpace can propel a band into the stratosphere - just ask The Arctic Monkeys. Jim Carroll reports

IT'S highly unlikely that Rupert Murdoch has ever looked at the MySpace profiles that bear his name. The News Corporation chief spent $580 million last year acquiring the social networking site, the first time he's made a substantial grab for any slice of internet turf. However, he probably hasn't spent much time surfing the site trying to find like-minded souls to add to his list of friends. There are, at the moment anyway, very few other media moguls with their own MySpace pages.

What has attracted Murdoch and his very deep pockets to MySpace is the fact that 54 million people, the vast majority under 25 years of age, spend a considerable amount of their time on the site. Each user can have their own unique page, from where they can update blogs, upload new content, add new friends and generally profile themselves to the wider world in whatever way they wish.

When they're finished with their own stuff, they can surf the site, have a laugh at other profiles, listen to music by bands they like the sound of and watch videos. It's all free, the service being wholly funded by advertising.

The growth of MySpace has been spectacular. When it began in January 2004, it was a homely online hang-out for an extended network of Los Angeles-based friends. Now, some five million new users set up shop on the site every month. It's become a social networking phenomenon capable of attracting attention from any corporation looking to tap into a youth market with an advertising campaign.

While the bulk of the users are north American, you'll find users here from all over the globe. Many other sites have attempted to emulate MySpace's appeal, but have not achieved anywhere near the same results.

Given the profile and interests of its users, MySpace has naturally attracted musicmakers in droves. There are now over one million MySpace pages dedicated to bands and musicians. Each one of these acts sees MySpace as a new way to develop its profile, promote CDs and attract more people to its concerts.

The list of acts who now have MySpace pages, all usually featuring samples of the act's music, is as wide and deep as you can imagine. At the time of writing, the Top 10 most-viewed artist lists include such names as Simple Plan, James Blunt, Weezer, Morrissey, Panic! At The Disco, Jah Jah and Tila Tequila. The likes of Depeche Mode, Black Eyed Peas, The Darkness, Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails have all used MySpace to premier new material or forthcoming albums.

Of course, many acts who have MySpace pages have had nothing to do with getting the content on to the site. Many pages have been generated and are maintained by the act's record label or management as another marketing tool. After all, it's hard to imagine Kate Bush taking time out from her hectic schedule to pass on news about getting nominated for a Brit award.

In some cases, it's fans of the band who have taken up the task of spreading the word to the MySpace community. But this can often have unexpected consequences. For instance, the page dedicated to the Arctic Monkeys now carries a disclaimer that the site is unofficial and unconnected with the band. Alex Turner and co have obviously grown tired of hearing how much their success was due to a MySpace profile that had nothing to do with them in the first instance.

For the most part, though, it's the bands themselves who do the donkey work. They update news of forthcoming gigs, add new tracks to their sites, interact with fans and generally try to keep everything shipshape.

Dozens and dozens of Irish acts have already joined the migration to MySpace, seeing it as a way to get their music across to a bigger, wider audience than is probably available at home. While all bands have their own standalone websites, the view is that there's no harm in trying to tap into the multi-million strong MySpace community.

Dublin act Delorentos have already found their MySpace page to be hugely useful. "We find that we're getting more e-mails from our MySpace page than from our own website," says singer Kieran McGuinness. "Many people don't look at individual websites any more and instead go automatically to MySpace to check you out there. They might go to a gig, hear a band they like and go on MySpace afterwards to find out more. People tend to spend hours on MySpace and come across bands that way."

It's not just punters who are using MySpace to come across new music. Many A&R men now prefer to listen to new bands via MySpace rather than sifting through a mountain of unsolicited demo CDs. It also increases the chances for bands who haven't already developed an industry buzz of being heard.

For Delorentos, McGuinness says their MySpace presence is a case of "using every avenue that's out there" to get their music to a wider audience. "I know it's a very sad thing for an indie band to say, but something like MySpace is very good for marketing and for building up an audience. That especially applies in places you haven't already toured. We now have a lot of people from New York who've signed up via MySpace, so hopefully we'll have an audience when we get to play there."

He also sees MySpace as additional proof that bands are taking on more and more promotional tasks themselves, tasks which were once left to record labels and hired hands. "I think it's very good for a band to do as much as they can themselves and not rely on other people. It shows you're determined to take responsibility."

There are plenty of precedents to show that MySpace can help acts to raise their profile considerably. California-based band Orson, one of the most highly-tipped acts for 2006, first came to prominence when tracks on their MySpace site were raved about in music industry tipsheet Record of the Day, and this led directly to a deal with Mercury Records. However, while MySpace does provide a valuable platform to gain exposure and build an online audience, it is just one part of the promotional mix and is not enough in itself to ensure that a band hit the heights. This still requires conventional sales and marketing methods in addition to some decent songs. Indeed, the recent launch of MySpace Records, a new label in conjunction with Interscope that aims to sign and promote selected MySpace acts, shows that the old-school will prevail for a while longer.

Yet, as with the other seismic shifts that the music industry has experienced over the past decade, MySpace shows that there is a new way for bands to operate. If your music is good enough, you can get enough word-of-mouth recommendations to help you build a MySpace audience keen to hear more. The real trick, though, is turning those friends your band has made into people who will buy your album or go to your show.

DO YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND?

ACCORDING to his MySpace profile, Tom has 54,365,200 friends. A 30-year-old male from Santa Monica, California, Tom's interests include the internet, karaoke, baseball, hiking, the history of communism and first World War aviation. He's a fan of The Beatles, Stanley Kubrick and George Orwell.

The reason Tom is so popular is because he's the man who started MySpace. Tom Anderson was a musician with a film degree who wanted to create a website where musicians could promote their music and people could chat about what they heard. He persuaded dozens of his friends to sign up and MySpace was in business.

These days, despite the fact that his site has exploded and has made him a very wealthy individual, Anderson still tries to maintain the personal contact with the MySpace community. When a new user signs up, Anderson is the first person to contact them. He invites them to send him back a message and he (or one of the MySpace customer services team) responds. It is extremely schmaltzy, but it seems to work.

According to Anderson, MySpace is an accumulation of his various creative interests. "I wrote books as a teenager and edited a journal of poetry and fiction in college. I wrote videogame reviews. I was a singer in a rock band and I ran a community website from my home computer when I was 14. All these things led to MySpace, especially the emphasis on user creativity. I wanted to create a community where artists could show their stuff and I think that's what makes the site interesting."