this one
Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt
By Jason Ashcraft

Myspace or LouisvilleMojo for Louisville Musicians?

By Jason Ashcraft

The question of whether Myspace or LouisvilleMojo (a.k.a. Mojo) as a promotional resource for musicians has became something to ponder once again. Let me quickly review the undeniable facts with both of the websites, as it pertains to extra promotional exposure for musicians.

With Myspace, musicians have a much larger audience than with Mojo. Almost everyone who has a Mojo account has a Myspace account. Myspace also offers more versatile features that enable musicians to directly connect with fans by streaming audio and video of their music directly from their Myspace homepage. Additionally, Myspace does not allow the overtly sexually explicit audience onto the site with the consistency that LouisvilleMojo does. And for those types of profiles that slip through the security cracks on Myspace, they can be easily filtered out of your mail inbox and/or promotional tags on your profile, by enabling a few security features that is designed to filter for that type of material.

On the other hand, LouisvilleMojo is light years behind with respect to almost all of the Myspace features. Many 'Mojo-ers' as commonly referred to, concur that the site's biggest failure is that its' administrators allow the seemingly endless population of cheating spouses, transsexuals, underage kids, possible pedophiles and all the other obnoxious freak-a-zoid users of the "hotties" profiles to keep their accounts active. On top of that, there is no structured way to filter these types of profiles from your inbox other then to blacklist them after the fact that they have already annoyed or offended you in some way. Some of these Mojo freak-a-zoids are probably better known on LMPD's online watch list more they are on LouisvilleMojo's "hotties" profiles. By the way, I absolutely do not intend to so label everyone who has a LouisvilleMojo "hottie" profile, just the seemingly vast majority of them.

The bottom line seems to be this: As a musician, you get no more extra promotion on LouisvilleMojo than you are already getting by having a Myspace page - multiplied by ten. And whatever you may get from LouisvilleMojo, do you really want to be associated with a website that is best known for intimate encounters than for promoting the "Louisville" music scene? You shouldn't.

The only thing LouisvilleMojo has done for Louisville musicians is host a few poorly promoted shows to their freak-a-zoid user base. They have demonstrated on a few occasions that they are not even capable of filling Headliners and barely were able to fill half the outfield of the Turners of Louisville's softball field. The proof is in the pudding here. I attended these events and honestly half-way felt sorry for the great bands that were talked into playing these events. They didn't deserve that. But, obviously the LouisvilleMojo's management team, or "Team Mojo" as they are noted on their "hottie" profiles as, are trying to act as if the majority of their users are not just people trying to get drunk and laid versus going to see a good live music gig.

That being said, until LouisvilleMojo cleans up its member base, incorporates some stricter security standards and adds more audio/video capabilities that directly connect musicians to their intended fans, put all of your promotional resources into Myspace and use the extra time you gain to write some new songs. God knows some of you guys need to do that.

Nonetheless, it will better time spent as you musicians continue to try and find meaningful, effective ways to promote your music to your fans. Right now LouisvilleMojo is just not really interested or prepared in partnering with Louisville musicians in a meaningful manner. And Mojo, quit freeloading (as in 'not paying') off of WildLifeRadio.com's DJ Fender and his studio. It's already established that your demographic does not consist of enough music lovers for Fender or any musicians to be getting anything in trade, especially when you're offering no money for their services.

So, LouisvilleMojo in closing here is my suggestion to you: Run a big ad in the LEO's exotic and erotic advertising pages and watch your number of "hottie" profiles grow by leaps and bounds. Simultaneously, you can just go ahead and trash the idea of cleaning up and deleting all those "hottie" profiles. Go have a few beers instead. But you can now just market yourself to your real audience by doing this. That's your demographic, folks, so don't try and deny it. It is what it is.

If you're going to do something, then do it to the best of your ability, without hesitation, or don't do it at all. If you need a lesson in that regard of life, then my email address is ash_ent@yahoo.com. But please just quit trying to ride the coat tails of the Louisville music community to get some extra page views. Make your site something both respectful and effective for all musicians.

And by the way, you just learned the hard way that if you throw rocks at me, then I will throw grenades back. That's how it goes when you mess with a jarhead.