Cheating on MySpace ...?

PaulBrewer

That pop band Fox Avenue we were working with appear to exploding on MySpace ..... nearly 10,000 plays on one song in a few weeks.

That got me thinking .... are those young scamps cheatin' in anyway???


Does anyone know if there is a way to cheat? If it was an automated thingy surely MySpace would know?

I'm sure they're not cheating .... but I'm wondering is it possible ...

Neurojazz

There are many sites offering myspace hacks... some are like automated friend adders also - all hackable/automated stuff... Myspace did implement capcha security but people still find ways around it... the player would be something very easy to bypass.

PaulBrewer

But wouldn't that be very obvious to MySpace?

fitz

If it's set to autoplay it would be extremely easy to fake plays without getting caught. Much easier to detect auto friend adding...

PaulBrewer

fitz wrote: »

If it's set to autoplay it would be extremely easy to fake plays without getting caught. Much easier to detect auto friend adding...

But 10K+? , they've another 2 songs up one with 6k+ and another with 4k+ ...

That's a hell of a lot of Autoplaying.

How would one do that?

fitz

Just some scripting to open the page and close it again, then repeat.

eoin5

Anything is possible with enough pentagrams and solemn muttering.

PaulBrewer

eoin5 wrote: »

Anything is possible with enough pentagrams and solemn muttering.

That's true ...

Hoo-Haa

fitz wrote: »

Just some scripting to open the page and close it again, then repeat.

^^^^ wot he said

frobisher

They'll get banned if got.

studiorat

frobisher wrote: »

They'll get banned if got.

Horror of horrors!!!

Wouldn't happen on Frob's watch eh?

frobisher

studiorat wrote: »

Horror of horrors!!!

Wouldn't happen on Frob's watch eh?

I meant banned from myspace Rat! My powers don't stretch so far into the Rupert Murdoch empire. Oh how I wish they did......

PaulBrewer

frobisher wrote: »

They'll get banned if got.

That's what I'd have thought ...

The next logical question is ... if it's so easy, why ain't everyone doing it then? ... or at least most of the misguided twerps who have a MySpace page ...

woodsdenis

The other thing is that no record company now pays a great deal of attention to Myspace hits.

1. Too easy to manipulate
2. Hits to sales ratio is terrible.
3. They all got badly burned by this in the day when when they weren't as internet savvy.

The only reason for doing this is to bolster your own ego.

I remember seeing the sales figures for a MySpace sensation and I think the hits were genuine. Compared to tens of thousands of hits the sales were miniscule.

PaulBrewer

woodsdenis wrote: »

The other thing is that no record company now pays a great deal of attention to Myspace hits.

1. Too easy to manipulate
2. Hits to sales ratio is terrible.
3. They all got badly burned by this in the day when when they weren't as internet savvy.

The only reason for doing this is to bolster your own ego.

I remember seeing the sales figures for a MySpace sensation and I think the hits were genuine. Compared to tens of thousands of hits the sales were miniscule.

Yes, I can imagine it wouldn't turn into Sales .... but that's the world innit?

PaulBrewer

http://www.mymp3plays.com/

That might help!

dav nagle

PaulBrewer wrote: »

http://www.mymp3plays.com/

That might help!

OMG

Neurojazz

All this myspace twisting is sooooo simple...

The Opera browser is one fine example. You can leave the browser on overnight auto refreshing on your chosen site and you'd get masses of hits...

When i went to college there was a guy playing web games during the class pretty much 100% of the time (which was pretty disrespectful of the tutors!) so i spent my evenings making a little application to cheat in his game and kill his character automatically everytime he logged in - took a fair while but got him in the end - he couldn't work out how i was doing it either as it was my computer at home... I may be a spoilsport, but it was a good exercise of the skills learned

The programs are simple to make after a few months of learning about coding - so i can imagine that pretty much all webstats can be forged/automated. Even unique site hits can be fiddled with the use of proxy browsers that use random computers to mask their real location.

pgasm

I know a lot of bands that do this on myspace. Its a way of getting to the top of the top unsigned bands page quickly. Aparently radio stations like Phantom etc watch this part of myspace and like to play these bands.

I have seen peoples band pages with ridiculous song play counts, and with over 10,000 friends. I thought that myspace would mind, i thought they would try regulate things and that those bands would be banned, but for as many bands i have come across that do this, i havnt heard of ANY being banned.

Friend Blaster Pro - you have to pay a few quid for its full service but you can add unlimited amounts of friends, unlimed amounts of song counts etc all by clicking a few buttons.

jtsuited

i think if you're pulling tricks like this, ya need to ask yourself what exactly you're about.

There is NO benefit to getting your viewcount or playcount up because everyone knows those stats are easily manipulated.

And every so often myspace bans people who have messed with all that stuff. Not just people who use friend adders.

I'm a big fan of anyone anywhere getting into mischief to outsmart any system but the problem with this one is it's entirely pointless.

dav nagle

jtsuited wrote: »

i think if you're pulling tricks like this, ya need to ask yourself what exactly you're about.

I agree My space has turned into a fecking untrustworthy advertisement spam infested novelty load of ball sack.

BaZmO*

dav nagle wrote: »

I agree My space has turned into a fecking untrustworthy advertisement spam infested novelty load of ball sack.

Exactly. Does anybody even take Myspace seriously anymore?

The only use for Myspace now is if you've just seen or heard a band somewhere and want to check out some of their stuff quickly.

dav nagle

BaZmO* wrote: »

Exactly. Does anybody even take Myspace seriously anymore?

The only use for Myspace now is if you've just seen or heard a band somewhere and want to check out some of their stuff quickly.

its a refrence manual to bands at best

fitz

I think the days when it was used as a way of finding new and exciting bands are gone tbh. There's too much there for it to be useful or meaningful.
But, it's something you need to have set up as a band, so you have a presence to reach people who use it.

The absolutely DIRE quality that sometimes results from their re-encoding of a perfectly nice sounding mp3 when you upload is one of the reasons I don't take it too seriously.

PaulBrewer

BaZmO* wrote: »

Exactly. Does anybody even take Myspace seriously anymore?

The only use for Myspace now is if you've just seen or heard a band somewhere and want to check out some of their stuff quickly.

We've used it quite a bit for attracting (musical) business and , as you say, an initial introduction to a band.

PaulBrewer

fitz wrote: »

I think the days when it was used as a way of finding new and exciting bands are gone tbh. There's too much there for it to be useful or meaningful.
But, it's something you need to have set up as a band, so you have a presence to reach people who use it.

The absolutely DIRE quality that sometimes results from their re-encoding of a perfectly nice sounding mp3 when you upload is one of the reasons I don't take it too seriously.

Hasn't the player improved recently? Still manky ok thought.

Congrats on your Elevation too !!:D

jtsuited

I find myspace very useful for the music I'm into. Especially seeing gig listings. As far as actual 'social networking' uses, it's a whole load of crap.

pgasm

I wish they banned more people though, or take it a bit more seriously, because i havnt heard of anyone getting banned or cautioned at all. Maybe im wrong.

It is very pointless and people will see the fact that you have way too many plays and views etc.....but it still brings them to the top of myspace searches, even if only for a few days. Its kind of a good idea in a way if you want to get noticed, but it just fecks up the whole myspace system and ruins its credibility.

I also hate the way i get so much spam emails from bands and businesses i have never heard of, does anyone read these things?! You can do these spam emails using these friend blaster programmes too - its ridiculous. At least ive never got those "im hot and horny for you" spams like the ones i get on my bebo! Every day! False hope everytime i check my bebo!

on the other hand - i have found some really good music on myspace that i wouldnt have found anywhere else....so yes it is good for that sometimes.

PaulBrewer

pgasm wrote: »

on the other hand - i have found some really good music on myspace that i wouldnt have found anywhere else....so yes it is good for that sometimes.

Yup

shayleon

You can hire someone in India to do the job. There are companies to find these people. Will cost you peanuts and the job will get done.

The other way is to really get involved and do it yourself.
A band I worked with, "The Haemoglobins" got TONS of visits really fast, and they did it themselves - a lot of hard work, but it did the trick.

frobisher

shayleon wrote: »

The other way is to really get involved and do it yourself.
A band I worked with, "The Haemoglobins" got TONS of visits really fast, and they did it themselves - a lot of hard work, but it did the trick.

Did it give them any long term benefit?

jtsuited

here's my real problem with myspace:

they ban people for using myspace for advertising/commercial purposes. Yet they have advertisements for Duffy, Dawn Porter, and that boxer's myspace profiles.

It's either a place that can be used for commerce or a place merely for social networking. If it is both, banning people for certain commerce related activities is bullsh1t.

if6was9

I set up a myspace for my "studio" purposes, it was a band profile and it got deleted before I even got to change any of the profile stuff like background and stuff. Now I use a personal one for the exact same thing but since I can't upload my own tunes I've got a soundclick player with my stuff it on my page. I prefer it- unlimited amount of tunes to upload, its free and the quality seems better to boot.
The myspace player has a low pass at 7 khz, and they only play the stuff at 96khz, they absolutely rape the stuff people upload onto it.

I find myspace handy for chatting with bands and organising stuff, I use 3 accounts.
One for my band where we use it to talk to other bands and have gotten alot of gigs and made some real friends this way, I do take notice of how many plays we get- we don't fiddle with it so it gives a pretty good indication for us if anyones actually listening to our stuff.

One for my gig promotion company, we pretty much use myspace exclusively for booking bands, been doing so on a weekly basis since october and its perfect for the job. Easy for bands to find us, talk to us and book gigs. also handy for sorting out gear and times and stuff between bands for dates. Play counts matter nothing on this one- we have uploaded live recordings I've done at the gigs though as its a service we offer to bands.

Then I've got my aforementioned personal/studio page- i've gottena few gigs with this so its great.
Myspace is still by far my favourite social networking site, I hate bebo and facebook. At least with myspace you can actually get in contact with real bands and people and conduct proper business

henessjon

just hit refresh,,

but why bother

shayleon

frobisher wrote: »

Did it give them any long term benefit?

Nope.
Perhaps all the views they got were by people who wanted the Haempglobins to listen to their stuff and couldn't care less about the Haemos.