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page of your favourite band, it is easy to visit their friends and find out what they are listening to and recommending to others. You will also pick up other similar artists and eventually find that there are loads of new artists for you to check out, especially useful for small time bands looking to promote their work on a zero budget as it can be made available to literally millions of people through this site. As well as the promotion of bands, which seems to be what it really excels at, there are numerous games to play on line, it would seem that the place is too good to be true.

Well there are some downsides, well isn't that always the case? One of the things that you have to be aware of is that anything that you post in a public area remains the property of myspace and as such can be used by them. It goes something like this:

"By posting Content on any public area of MySpace.com, you automatically grant as well as represent and warrant that you have the right to grant to MySpace.com, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content to MySpace.com and that MySpace.com has the right to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."

Also the usual rules apply to minors using the site. Just because your sixteen year old daughter (minimum age for a full sign up) is chatting to a seventeen year old lad who claims to be a committed church goer and all round nice guy, that's not to say he is, anyone can put up a false picture and pretend to be something they are not. This obviously goes for the Internet as a whole, but the widespread success and ease of use of this site means that its best to be aware, not everyone is who they may seem. It reminds me of a picture a friend forwarded to me a while back of a picture of a hairy, bearded biker type sat at his computer in this boxer shorts, beer gut hanging down and the caption "I'm the twenty one year old model you were chatting to on line last night." That may be a bit of a laugh but the underlying message is worth thinking about.

As for me I love the place so far. Today I made contact with a guy whom I used to gig with and that I hadn't seen for about four years and after adding my name to a couple of band profiles, received a friend request from a struggling band from California who thought that I might like their music, judging by the friends I had listed. They were right he music was fantastic and I now have it downloaded for free on my PC. The site is really what you make of it, just like life really. Some people are happy to just send insults to their mates, others want highbrow discussions, others just want to promote their products, and others just want to make new friends. For me its about picking up some new music that I otherwise wouldn't have access to and maybe catch up with friends I haven't seen for a while.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
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