How to Use Myspace to Quickly Share Music


What started as an account check became an adventure in sharing my music.

I got around to logging into Myspace again today. I never really used it in its original incarnation. Truth be told, I wanted to know what it was before when my daughter signed up for an account. Although I’ve known that it was more of sharing space for music now, I hadn’t spent much time with it. That changed today.

A little background.
My jump into Myspace was prompted by an article about potential account issues. I try to keep my accounts alive, even if not used much, and thought it a good idea to make sure my profile was still working. It was, but required some updating.

After getting logged back in—I did say it’d been awhile, I realized it was using my old profile picture. I quickly updated it along with my cover art to bring it up to date. While doing so, at some point I ended up in the uploads screen. That got me thinking.

I’ve used ACIDplanet since I started to mix and share music back in 2006. It was a fun diversion. I used ACID to upload my original songs, but the format used won’t play in macOS. I can upload MP3 versions and get them to work, but that is a pain.

I did play with SoundCloud for a bit, liking their interface. But then they changed direction and lately seem to floundering. A bit sad as it was such a good concept. Needless to say, I’d been thinking about using alternatives for some time now. Could Myspace be my next sharing site?

Creating an album.
Jumping in, I grabbed my songs from my iTunes folder. Yes, I had saved them as nice MP3s a few years back and made sure I had copies in both iTunes match and Google music. I lost many of the tapes I made as a teenager, so thought it a good idea to archive my songs.

Myspace makes it pretty easy to upload. Just drag and drop. After a few minutes all my songs were there. But, I wasn't done. Seems Myspace didn't grab the song metadata, even through I updated the ID3 tags quite some time ago. Fortunately, Myspace made it easy to update. I did have to drag some artwork back over, but it gave me a chance to update a few things.

Since I had organized my music into albums, I created an album for all my electronic music. I’d used Canva to create some album art, so I uploaded it and used its name, Eclectic Vibes, as the album name. Once done, you have to add each of the songs into it by editing them.

One problem I found is that there isn’t a way to set track numbers. The order you add items dictates the track number. So, I updated each entry in creation order. This seems to work well, but something to note if you screw up. You can always detach a song from the album and try again.

Problems to watch for.
Myspace makes it easy to create and share work. Yet, I ran into an issue when I tried to listen to my music. I could add it to the player, but wouldn’t ever start. After some fumbling I realized it was my ad blocker. Turning it off fixed the issue. Kind of annoying, but Myspace isn't too intrusive.

Another thing I noticed is that in song view it shows all the songs in creation order with numbers. If you are like me and have a mix of songs added at different times, the display may be confusing. The album display looks better, but I don’t have all my songs in albums. Just something to note.

One other thing you can do though is create a portfolio. Since I’m using Myspace for music, I added in my album and the two songs that I shared. It is a nice big view and makes it easy to share with others. I recommend playing with the different features to see what works for you.

Listening time.
And there you have it, a quick way to upload and share music. I’m still unsure if Myspace is the right place for me. They also offer photo and video sharing, but I use Flickr and Youtube for that. If you want a one stop shop it fits. For now, I’ll use it as a backup to whatever happens with the other services I use.



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