How many music industry emails did you receive last week? For me about 30, excluding any that got trapped as spam. I bet you every one of them thought they were the only ones I received...
Let's think about it - you have a friend on MySpace, you send a broadcast - how many other friends list are they on? What percentage of emails the friend received was yours? for me, if you were number 31, yours would be 3% of just my music emails, let alone all the other emails I get.
Spam - the reason why mobile phone companies and banks don't spam, is because there's so few of them, and you tend to only have one relationship at a time with them - they have managers who's job it is to ensure no-one is spammed e.g. they will have a policy that says no-one is to be emails more than x times a month.
In music we simply can't do this on our own, because we don't know what each other is doing. Being in the audience of music industry emails is like being in a mega musical instruments store, listening to people trying out instruments for the first time, making a whole lot of noise, al playing at the same time.
We think about the audience at gigs, because they're right there - for the audience to have a good experience, a lot of factors have to come together - the band must be well rehearsed, playing in time, mixed just right, lighting, the right performance energy, well thought out set list, strong songs. In short, the music makers must be highly coordinated to ensure that the audience is having a good experience and would want to come back.
People are always asking us 'Whats the difference between Musicosity and Facebook?" What's the difference between making good music and simply having a guitar? Good communication, like good music, takes practice, and you need the right instruments for the job. Social media are designed as domestic tools for 'friends' to chat about random stuff, to keep each other online so the company behind the social media can sell advertising. Increasingly, social media are being seen as time wasters (see article) , so use whatever tools you want, but think about whether you want to be associated with adding to the noise.
Musicosity is purpose built for communication about live music in order to help people get to more shows - we all benefit from having a 'nice place' for the audience to come to where the 'music' of the communication in it is coordinated, where the audience won't feel ambushed, and the bands work together to create a good experience the way they do when playing their music - which after all is another form of communication. We have the opportunity to create somewhere a bit more special for the audience...that they might be more inclined to listen!