Another up-and-coming band that actively uses MySpace is Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective, an Americana group from the San Diego area that tours widely all over California. Recently nominated for the title of Best American Band for the San Diego Music Awards, band member Louis Caverly says they use it for at least an hour every day when they’re not on the road. “MySpace is a community and for any community to work you have to talk to the people,” says Caverly. “It is pretty rad to talk directly with folks, be it potential fans or possibly a personal hero that you stumble upon.”

At first it just seemed like an easy place to upload tracks but Caverly now believes that it is a great tool to have in the arsenal as they build their career. They will solicit potential fans but not by using a “friend adder.” Instead, they take the time to surf the site for people with tastes that match their style and for bands that play a similar kind of music. For them, it’s really about logging on and making it work. “MySpace will help us to increase our audience because if you use it, it works.”

Shawn Hatfield, an experimental electronic musician in San Francisco, has a similar philosophy when it comes to reaching out through MySpace. "I already had a personal page and figured it would be a good place to give my fans access to information on upcoming projects and also a way for them to feel like they've had a personal connection with me that goes beyond just owning the CD or record," he says. Hatfield has had offers to play gigs overseas through MySpace and believes that MySpace has the potential to help him gain enough attention to score larger gigs.

But how realistic is it that the music industry sees these band pages as anything more than must-have novelties for their artists? Well, if an artist catches the eye of an active MySpace user who happens to work in A&R (artist and repertoire, in case you have always wondered what it stood for), it’s very realistic. And such A&R reps do exist. Tony Kiewel, head of A&R for indie label SubPop, is one active user who believes that MySpace is something more than just a project for interns or a collective unheard cry for attention. "I definitely look at it to hear new stuff both as a fan of music and as an A&R guy," he says. "If I like a band I'll look at their page and often times end up listening to their friends’ bands that they have in the top 10 or whatever that little list is." So there's no algorithm that converts MySpace friends to record sales but who a musician is connected to and how may lead to an important discovery by the right person.

Kiewell also relies on the site as a research tool and a quick way to zero in on what people are listening to. "You can't Google 'The Books' and find anything helpful about the band without some serious digging," Kiewell explains. “If I go to MySpace and do a band name search I can find them in seconds." And it's not just a band bio that you'll find; it’s an interactive page full of information. "I can hear them. I can see where they're from. I can see who they're fans of," says Kiewell.

And for musicians, the ability to check out who other musicians are into makes it an extremely useful networking tool. Solo artist Lia Rose experienced this first hand when one of her favorite indie musicians, Damien Jurado, left a comment on her MySpace music page. “I could hardly believe it, and of course returned the sentiment with a comment on his page,” she says. That comment led to an interesting chain of events for Rose. A member of a band in Holland, Winterbirds, found Rose’s comment on Jurado’s page and they added each other as friends. “After about a year of corresponding,” she tells me, “he gives me an internet music challenge by sending a song with just guitar and inviting me to write lyrics and melody and send some vocals back.” This correspondence turned into a project called Weatherkingdom that, naturally, has its own MySpace page too.

MySpace is more than just another venue for Internet voyeurism—it is actually a fantastic tool for labels, fans, and artists alike. “The real take-a-ways include finding other artists to play shows with, Internet radio stations to spin our songs, industry contacts, far away friends and folks that can help our career grow,” believes Louis Caverly. And the recent announcement that MySpace has teamed up with Snocap to allow artists to sell their tracks directly through MySpace pages will only make things more interesting. “I think it will be the great equalizer for those bands that hoard ‘friends,’” Caraeff contends. “They will soon find out the sobering results of 40,000 friends and $6.00 in total downloads.”

But will the day come when a label “discovers” a band through their MySpace page? "It's totally possible," Kiewell of SubPop predicts. "It hasn't happened yet but I bet it will soon.”

Click here for Part 1 >>