I hold the unpopular opinion that despite its current exponential growth, MySpace is nearing the peak of a bell curve that will eventually dip down into obsolescence. Once Intermix (MySpace’s parent company) was bought out by mega-media conglomerate News Corp (aka Fox), I felt content in knowing my opinion was becoming fact.After reading this Wall Street Journal article, I believe we’re now witnessing what may be the beginning of the end for MySpace. There are many reasons to be apocalyptic about the social networking giant, but the biggest one is highlighted in this passage:

MySpace has become the focus of criticism from authorities, teachers and parents that children are exposed to risqué content and are preyed upon by sexual predators who meet them on the site. Such episodes aren’t unique to MySpace, but the site stands out because of its size — 54 million registered users, with about 19% of monthly users under 17, according to comScore

In response, News Corp. is scrambling to make MySpace a safer place for young people. News Corp. plans to appoint a “safety czar” to oversee the site, launch an education campaign that may include letters to schools and public-service announcements to encourage children not to reveal their contact information.

Do a Google News search on MySpace and you’ll see the crisis reaching a fever pitch.

This recent wave of bad press for MySpace is the equivalent of a parent finding and reading their child’s journal. Kids always knew that their profiles were publicly viewable, but now that they know their parents are watching, do you really think they’re going to want to continue publicly expressing their burgeoning curiosity about sex, drugs, or whatever?

Currently, the media has re-branded MySpace as a tool for parents to check up on the secret activities and thoughts of their children. And with MySpace taking steps to make it impossible to lie about one’s age (see the WSJ article) the options for remaining undetected by authority figures are becoming slim.

While I’m sure MySpace will weather this current media-freak out, I’m convinced that stripping away the image of MySpace as a chaotic and often highly sexualized atmosphere will strip away the very appeal of participating.

Much like AOL (the chat rooms in 1.0 were truly a red-light district), MySpace is compelled to clean up the network and de-sexualize the service as much as possible. Sure, it’ll still be a useful tool for musicians and people with stuff to promote, but the exploratory expression (sexual or otherwise) of teens is what keeps its users active and drives new subscribers.

So what will become of MySpace? In my next post, I’ll go into some other reasons why I think the sun is setting on the popular portal, and why the MySpace of tomorrow will function much differently than MySpace of today.

How much is America’s largest online convergence of youth culture worth? To Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., (parent company of the Fox media empire) the figure is around $580 million. MySpace’s parent company, Intermix, will acquire the remaining shares of MySpace that they didn’t own. Then News Corp. makes its purchase, and now MySpace will be part of Fox Interactive Media.

All the press I’ve seen on the deal focuses on MySpace’s #6 ranking in internet traffic polls, 200,000 registered bands and over 16 million registered users. And while the reports have mentioned that Murdoch’s decision to purchase was to “appeal to young people who are watching less television and reading fewer newspapers,” the mainstream media is missing the massive ramifications of this half-billion dollar deal.

This acquisition is about much more than money and site traffic. MySpace is the first widely successful online social network, rocketing past Friendster and Ryze with a four-digit growth percentage. All this in spite of the fact that MySpace does no marketing or advertising and creates none of its own content.

Many people are under the illusion that clicking on animated graphics and filling out online polls constitutes interactive media. But truly interactive media is not one-sided, it is based on the interaction between two entities, ultimately two people. And that’s why MySpace is important as a forerunner of interactive online communities. The content consists of the interactions between the various registered users. The comments, pictures and lists of favorite movies are simply metadata for each individual person.

Marshal McLuhan’s famous phrase, “the medium is the message” is modified by the emergence of social networking communities. Now, “the individual is the medium and the message”.

It has been suggested that the deal will be a rip-off for Fox unless MySpace’s CEO Chris DeWolfe and president Tom Anderson can use their social networking knowhow to recussitate the withered tentactles of Fox Interactive Media (specifically their News, Entertainment and Sports identities). Though I find this idea hard to fathom, it does gives way to the larger question of whether a dinosaur media company understands what they’re doing with a two-year old internet phenomenon. Napster comes to mind.

Honestly, I could give a crap if Fox makes half a billion or loses it all. New methods of social networking will develop, possibly alongside MySpace and possibly independent of it. I’m more concerned about Fox having detailed personal profiles on millions of consumers. The main content of MySpace is essentially a database of detailed consumer autobiographies. Fox now knows about everything we watch, see, hear and create. In this way, MySpace is like a focus group in front of a two-way mirror. Users are bearing their souls to their peers, generally unaware that there are is a corporation monitoring their conversation.

Media conglomerates have historically made their money by manufacturing content and distributing it in a top-down model to consumers. In interactive media and social networking, however, the audience does its own content creation and marketing. All the media conglomerate has to do is sit back and collect the advertising revenue. The corporation need only to drop products into the network and watch as the youth market reacts with their MySpace accounts and their wallets.

This is not to say that MySpace will necessarily go to hell; the extra revenue will certainly help improve the system as long as corporate bureaucracy is kept at bay. It ain’t broke and they’d be fools to try and fix it. We can look forward to new opportunities in expression and communication, but it is utlimately the audience that generates the content, and the audience will decide for itself where to do its social networking. Online, the audience is always one step ahead of the industry. Fox can change MySpace, but they can’t change the audience. And the audience is MySpace.

This observant Orlando Sentinel article concerns a recurring topic which has always piqued my interest: the use of classical music in public spaces to deter loiterers and reduce the presence of criminals, hooligans and punks.

Piped-in classical music can be found everywhere from parking lots to the London Underground, put there as a low-cost solution to deterring shady characters from hanging around public spaces. The crazy thing is that it works. The theory is that punk and criminal types have such strong associations with classical music being ‘uncool’ and feel uncomfortable being immersed in a cultural expression so antithetical to their own.

This practice has raised the ire of high society types who see the use of classical music to deter public congregation as vulgar and disrespectful. However, the aforementioned article keenly points out that it wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century, when recording technology began to gain in popularity, that classical music was considered as anything more than a mere “perfume or drug” to be applied to affect emotional states. In the words of University of California music historian Robert Fink:

You pick classical music because it’s better than other kinds of music… But the pieces you use for doing that predate classical music as a concept and come from an era when music was the lowest of the arts.

Exalting any kind of music to the point of elite snobbery is certainly anti-punk in that it creates an esoteric inner circle that discourages public interest as genres become private clubs. This has certainly happened to classical music, but this phenomenon can be observed in many genres, including punk. Often times, this isolation occurs when a genre becomes accepted by the masses. As a defensive reaction to the ‘uncoolness’ of a genre that has grown too popular, dedicated fans build a barrier of hyper-criticism and hermetic thinking. In the process, the genre’s biggest fans are alienated from the masses, and vice versa.

It was the introduction of recording technology that brought classical music into the zeitgeist, and popular appeal quickly quarantined a cult culture of art snobbery. Pop music made things worse for classical music fans, who scoffed at the reduction of music to the low-art, “perfume or drug” mentality of centuries past. No wonder that Mozart makes the coke pushers run away.

The use of classical music as a disinfectant for punks in public gathering spaces is ironic because it is analogous to how punk rockers have used confrontational methods in an attempt to rid their environment of unwanted elements. 7-11s and bus terminals everywhere are essentially using classical music in the context of punk, to confront unwanted guests and hasten their departure.

But punk is more about change than confrontation, and classical music lacks the former. Most of the genre’s stars have long decomposed and those who preach the genre’s virtues are few and far between. The genre is essentially a revered corpse. Very not punk.

Or is it? How many times have you heard, “rock and roll is dead”? Genres are very much like organic life forms of their own. They are born, and then they die. As recording technology advances and postmodern culture becomes more chaotic, these genre life cycles become increasingly short. No wonder classical music fans were so incensed at the perversion of their treasured art form — they had the better part of a century to watch it die a slow, painful death.

Punk rock is as dead as classical music. Both genres live on as influences to myriad subgenres, but most of the bands that created the punk genre have disbanded or have died outright. With a few exceptions, those that survived are merely tributes to an earlier incarnation of the band. Genres are all about style, and style is a transient, intangible element. As much as music fans try to deny it, music never stays cool forever. As the opening line of Refused’s landmark album, The Shape of Punk to Come states:

They say the classics never go out of style but they do, they do. Somehow baby, I never thought that we do too.

Accepting that genres are essentially dead on arrival to the mainstream, why do fans bother spending the rest of their lives mourning the death of a loved style of music? Music, after all, is infinitely enjoyable: compositions can be always be brought back to life through performance. The music fans that sit around and complain about genres other than their favorite are arguing about which corpse is most decomposed.

There has been a recent resurgence in the popularity of classical music due to ease of digital access and enthusiastic bloggers such as those found at artsjournal.com. These online efforts breathe new life into a genre that has been all but ignored by mainstream critics and media. A renewed discussion and introduction of classical music is necessary if the genre is to shake the stodgy stereotypes that follow it into the 21st century. With an underground, independent attitude, classical music could once again be appreciated with modesty and integrity — key ingredients for punk.

It is just as unlikely that there will be another Mozart as there will be another Ramones. Fortunately, we will always have their music, and their integrity can never be marginalized, whether by snooty culture elitists or punk poseurs. Music is about community, not confinement. If classical music can once again develop an enthusiastic and open-minded community, perhaps eventually we’ll have hooligans being chased away to the tune of “I Wanna Be Sedated”. For the time being, classical music remains an antonym of ‘cool’ in our culture. Then again, punk is not about being cool either, even if the mainstream has perverted the genre into being concerned with maximum coolness.

At least classical music fans now seem to be proud that they’re not cool. If you ask me, that’s pretty punk.

Kids these days: all the sex and drugs and illegal downloading of music! The 14-24 demographic is full of jobless student slackers with no financial reponsibilities past cable bills and maybe a college loan. They spend all their money on CDs, video games, DVDs — superfluous entertainment products manufactured by the culture industry. They only pay attention to what they think is ‘cool’, but it’s impossible to know what’s ‘cool’ at any given moment because ‘cool’ is constantly changing and seems to have a mind of its own.

The kids have all the power! Isn’t this what we’ve always wanted, to realize the “Another Brick in the Wall” vision of a world where kids (we’re talking about the 14-24 demo here) build their life experiences in their culture rather than our classrooms? As the demographic with the most money to burn, one can imagine a vision of all the Cool Kids stading at the top of Cool Mountain waving $20 bills at a climbling, clawing mass of youth cutlure marketing executives.

The truth is, the kids influence the culture industry as much as the culture industry influences the kids. It’s a feedback loop in which both parties participate to create a combined culture, except the kids spend all the money and the industry takes it. Not so fair for the kids, seeing as they’re doing at least half the work.

Arguably, no single entity in the history of the culture industry has been as deeply involved in this feedback loop as MTV. Before the PC revolution and the Internet, MTV redefined our visual and musical culture with a new style of programming that changed television and marketing entirely. As writer Douglas Rushkoff observed:

Like the drips of water coming out of a faucet at an increasing rate, once the speed of edits reached a critical frequency, the linear story just broke apart as the programs reached turbulance. The media chaos this turbulance generated was called MTV… This style of rough, disjointed media was precicesly the landscape preferred by the channel surfer. It made coercion through traditional, narrative programming techniques impossible, and required that a new language — a language of chaos — be developed. The kids watching MTV learned to speak it like natives.” (from the excellent book Playing the Future: What We Can Learn from Digital Kids)

The kids’ new chaotic culture pulled the rug out from under the marketing industry, who subsequently assembeled a counter-chaos of new marketing techniques intented to acknlowledge the youth’s self-awareness that they are being marketed to. Of course, kids eventually grew hip to the marketers’ ingenuous attepts to ‘get on their level’ and tuned them out in turn. Failing the subtle approach, the marketers decided the only way to get noticed was to be invisible. Thus was born viral marketing. Marketers would appeal to the top 1% of so-called Cool Kids who influence other kids wanting to be cool and so on — a butterfly effect, a pyramid scheme. The best part was, marketers could exert influence on an entire demographic by interacting with only a choice few trendsetters.

A full history of how MTV became the center of youth culture will have to wait for another post. MTV basically became the best at what they do: understanding youth culture microcosms and macrocosms. They used this understanding to generate influence, and they used this influence to generate profit. There were ups and downs, moments when even the master marketers at MTV couldn’t keep up with the kids. But MTV always found a way to shepherd the sheep back to the flock.

In the course of things, maintaining youth culture influence meant MTV had to move away from music as content and relegate it to a supporting role beneath celebrity. This music-critic.com article describes how “Video Created the Revenue Star.” MTV drastically reduced the number of music videos it played in order to concentrate its marketing power on a few key acts. Shows were created in which the sole intent was cross-promoting the music celebrities that were in heavy rotation. This is most evident in the repurposing of popular show themes such as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Candid Camera into celebrity showcases — Cribs and Punk’d, respectively.

MTV received no real consumer or corporate challenege to its removal of music videos from its programming. Though many complained that, “there’s no more music on music television”, the kids kept watching anyway. MTV even assuaged their greif over the loss of music content with a sister station, MTV2, dedicated towards broadcasting more music videos (though you’ll still catch a Beavis and Butthead marathon if you turn it on at the wrong time). Viewers were content until one company got the crazy idea that they could compete with MTV’s music video monopoly — and it worked.

That company was Fuse, which launched in 2003 with a marketing campaign that tore MTV to pieces. Though Fuse is, in essence, much like MTV2 (this article argues that the two are almost identical brands), savvy marketing gained them access to over 30 million households in the US. That’s impressive when stacked up against MTV2’s household penetration, approaching 50 million, though it pales in comparison to MTV’s worldiwde viewership, which hovers around 300 million.

Fuse’s slogan of, “more music, less crappy television” resonated with viewers and created a healthy niche market. As Fuse’s ratings climbed, MTV felt compelled to react to the competition by setting MTV2 as a top-line business priorty. The company was done licking the wounds that Fuse’s marketing had inflicted. It was time to chase Fuse out of MTV’s monopoly. The new campaign was called “the two-headed dog.”

The two-headed dog concept can be thought to represent many things including the channel’s bisection of rap and rock or its approach at reaching viewers on both TV and the Web. It could also represent the two-headed corporate monster MTV is attempting to create by prioritizing MTV2. In any case, a silhouette of the animal was prominent in a special Super Bowl half-time launch promotion which saw the dog gracing the Jumbovision at Times Square and plastered on walls and magazines everywhere.

Like Fuse, the new MTV2 television identity operates in unison with a rich media website which ties programming to the Web, and vice versa. Comparing the sites side-by-side, Fuse seems to have a better understanding of interactivity and giving broadband site users what they want. MTV2.com will likely adapt with similar functionality as the idendity develops. As it stands, the MTV2 site falls flat with redundant content.

This great article at Business 2.0 summarizes the two-headed dog campaign’s attempts at invisible influence on youth culture. In particular, the article releates the story of a message board poster calling out an MTV-sanctioned marketing agent disguised as a peer, effectively quarantining a media virus before it spread. (An example of the offending post can be found here and all over the Web.) Another part of the strategy included free two-headed dog clothing giveaways at NYC shows performed by bands who were to be featured on the new channel — classic viral marketing.

Fuse’s campaign was successful because the media virus it exploited had already infected the youth culture. Millions of viewers bemoaned the loss of music videos on MTV, and Fuse responed by eploiting that attitude. The only option at MTV2’s disposal is to create a new media virus, an abstract concept centered on the image of a two-headed dog. The campaign was centered around a sort of “What is the Matrix?” appeal to curiosity, in hopes that the answer to the question, “What is the two-headed dog?” would be a revelation to cool kids everywhere. Unfortunately for MTV2, the revelation was just more of the same — the same music, the same aesthetic and the same exploitation of both artist and audience for financial gain.

Does the dog have legs? Judging from consumer reaction to the re-launch, viewers are already seeing through the marketing ploy. After all, MTV2 is essentially a rip-off of Fuse, which is essentially a rip-off of MTV. Both companies are competing for the same position in the feedback loop between the kids and the culture industry. It’s just that Fuse seems to like music a bit more, while MTV prefers money. The kids see through it all, and continue to dismantle parts of the culture industry and use them as tools to create their own culture. From the Web to decentralized file-sharing networks, the kids are struggling to overtake control of their own expression. This demand for an authentic cultural experience will eventually neuter the two-headed dog.

A deeper insight into the effect of MTV on youth culture and youth culture as a whole can be found at PBS’s The Way the Music Died