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Archives
Looking back |
Just so there's no confusion, I come today to offer my gratitude to you dedicated fans that tirelessly, thanklessly toil to build, and maintain the thousands of fan pages that have proliferated on the World Wide Web. I'd be lost without you. There's no more valuable source of information when I'm writing a column, feature, or review. I count on the lot of you to be my living encyclopedia of rock and roll. You seldom let me down. What you do is so essential to what I do, that I've decided that it would be ungracious of me not to offer some feedback. First, allow me to make a confession; I'm one of you. Since April of '95 I've maintained "Shoe Straps and Eyelashes - The Buffalo Tom Home Page." It was my first Web site, and now I do Web work for a living. In the two-plus years since the page's debut, it's undergone two complete revisions. Both of these stemmed from advances in my own abilities and thinking as a Webmaster. So allow me to mount my high-horse and share with you my insight as both a producer and consumer of fan pages. You deserve it. The first question you should ask yourself is whether your effort is needed. If there are no pages devoted to the artist you are contemplating glorifying on the Web, then do it. Some information, even badly organized, poorly presented, unreliable information is better than nothing. Those of you that have filled a void in this manner, I salute you. If there is already one or more Web site's devoted to your idol, the question is trickier. I've developed a rule of thumb. Look up the band or artist you're interested in on The Ultimate Band List, and see how many sites exist. The maximum reasonable number is five. This number is both arbitrary, and correct because this is my column. If there are more than seven, log off and consider another hobby. If there are between five and seven, take heart, one or more of these sites is probably defunct. Try and visit all of them, you may find there are fewer than five active sites. If there are five or more sites, there's a good chance one of them will be reasonably, if not exceedingly well organized, attractive, complete and accurate. There are, as I write this column, 71 sites listed in the UBL for Bush. That is too many. If you are contemplating starting a Bush site, go run around outside until the urge passes. There is absolutely no chance that there is a need for it. There are 66 Bush fans that have broken my rule. I'll grandfather the best 10 sites. The rest of you, get together and figure out which 61 sites to take down. I'll leave it to your judgment. Once you determine that the world has room for your site, there are several things you must consider. Determine in what way you are prepared to exceed the standard that's been set by those preceding you. If you're not going to improve on the existing standard, quit now. One more site is only useful if it's going to provide features other sites are lacking, or provide the same information in a more attractive or better organized manner. Figure out for what audience the site is intended. If the site exists solely for your vanity, as a little shrine to how much you love some illiterate homunculus with bad teeth and a bad attitude, then what you do doesn't matter. Knock yourself out, but control the urge to register your site where other people might accidentally be exposed to it. Fan mailing lists are excepted. Feel free to torture the homunculus' other fans with your effort. If the site is intended for people that have an actual curiosity about the artist, such as fans or journalists looking for information, then the demands are much higher. You should think in terms of prioritizing your effort to maximize the value you bring to your readers. The most important things to include on your site are the things aren't readily available elsewhere. Be an information resource, not merely a shrine. I can't think of a single more important thing than a lyric archive. Sure, most sites have them, but so few are organized worth a hill of beans because most of them are useless to someone that's trying to identify a song. Quite often, I will have nothing more to go on than a bit of a lyric. I want to know the title of the song and the album from which it comes. If you've decided that a separate document for every song is a good way to go, stop. Rethink. What are your readers to do, search each one? I recommend either one document which includes all the lyrics, or separate documents for the lyrics from each album, and one for non-album tracks. Keep the number of documents that must be searched to a minimum. There are plenty of people looking for guitar tab, tour dates, bios, and pictures. Sound and video aren't too important. Message boards or any other way for fans to find each other are really good. Mailing list archives are great. So what's not great? Acquisition of Photoshop is not the same thing as possessing an aptitude for design. Don't just start tossing off zippy graphics, background images, and animation just because you can. Restrain yourself. Try to come up with a coherent overall design concept that's consistent, incorporates sensible color and font choices, and isn't visually cluttered. Frames suck. Let me say that again, frames suck. Let people bookmark easily. Aside from being generally unattractive, they're a hindrance to people managing links as they see fit. Let the Web work. A word to the record companies; by and large, fan sites are far superior to most official record company sites. The official efforts are perfunctory at best, unless we're talking about franchise players. Your non-platinum acts are getting more loving attention from fan Webmasters than they'll ever get from you. Some of you get this, and link from your artists' pages on your corporate sites to the better fan pages. Some have seen the advantage of just turning a great fan page official. Kudos. Others of you are not so wise. Pay attention here. Fan pages are good for your acts. They indicate devotion, and offer free promotion. People are more impressed by how much effort an unpaid amateur devotes to your artists than in how much money you throw at a corporate site. It's a clue that the artists matter to people, and not just to publicists. Those of you that are coming down on the most devoted fans, those that stand on the hilltop and shout their heroes praises, are bloody idiots. Yeah, you can get all whiny about copyright and trademark, or you can realize that the Webmasters you're attacking have devoted themselves to spreading the popularity of your artists. You could even judge the market penetration of your artists by the number of redundant sites they inspire. The brain-trust behind brit-poppers Oasis have sic'ed the lawyers on the websters. Real smart. They've managed to turn a no-lose situation into a flood of bad press. Control freaks will always be control freaks, and will always pay the price. Even if the Webmasters lose this battle, it's Oasis that loses in the end. One might imagine that Sony Music's corporate webmasters, out of a need to continually justify their salaries, wish to prevent the widespread distribution of traffic they see as theirs. At the time of this writing, UBL had taken down links to all Oasis pages, including the official page. I don't think Sony's helping themselves or Oasis. To learn more about the Oasis situation, visit the Oasis Webmasters for Internet Freedom page. Michael Newman writes music reviews for the Topeka Capital-Journal.
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