by Luke Baumgarten & r & & r & & lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & A & lt;/span & cross the spectrum from demos and physical press kits, MySpace has, in just three years, become the de facto Web page, fan site and marketing tool for fledgling bands (for all bands, really). Yeah, it's slow, stupidly difficult to navigate, and it was designed with less foresight than a landfill slum in Rio de Janeiro. It's also, though, the seventh most popular Web site in the world. That's a lot of little potential eyes watching your band do its thing.


Since there are so many people on-site and since the streets of this global barrio are hopelessly tangled and littered with trash (you know who you are), bands have to make their page unique, user-friendly and simple. Those are difficult things to balance. The people you're trying to attract don't care enough to spend tons of time on your page and, since many of them are young, they have the crippled attention spans of the Internet generation. Whereas we openly solicited for the demos, for this section we went covert, perving some area MySpace pages for quality and content. They didn't ask for our advice, but they're sure as hell going to get it.





& lt;a href="http://myspace.com/yokohamahooks" & Yokohama Hooks & lt;/a & & r & Good: Great low-res music video showcases the Hooks' artpunk sensibilities. & r & Bad: Friend comments get dumped at the end of a very long page. & r & Ugly: Flour tortilla profile picture is terrifying.