IN A BAND? BETTER GET YOUR TRACKS UP ON YOUTUBE.

If you’re in a band and you’re looking to get our music out to as many would-be fans as possible, new data suggests that you should spend less time vamping up your MySpace page and more time uploading your tracks to YouTube. From Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman:

Media measurement company BigChampagne has released some data showing just how much the two have changed in the past year. In 2008, a typical track streaming on MySpace Music for one day was equal to a week’s spins on YouTube.  While it’s not metal, BigChampagne tracked the #4 song across both sites recently, Rihanna’s “Rude Boy,” and found that two years makes quite a difference.

MySpace Music (week ending 5/2): Rank: 4 (732,014 streams)
YouTube (week ending 5/2): Rank: 4 (4,282,376 video views)

Bram points out that while this speaks to MySpace’s decline, it’s got a lot more to do with YouTube’s rapid ascent; he backs up that claim with some nifty stats showing just how much YouTube has grown.

Of course, tons of people still visit MySpace to listen to music, but it seems like more and more people are searching for specific artists or songs on YouTube. So if you’re in a band — even if your band is signed — there’s no reason you shouldn’t post your songs on both MySpace and YouTube; include a link to your MySpace page and a link to your online store (if you’ve got one) in the video description so fans can find out more about you if they want to. May as well, right? You’ve got nothing to lose.

-VN