Medium Difficulty

For a pilot study of my research question, I conducted a few one-on-one interviews to get a sense of how a few music lovers I know interact with Myspace. The questioning went entirely differently than planned, and was discouraging for my initial hypothesis. At the same time, the interviews were very encouraging because they did reinforce the idea that Myspace plays a central role in the exploration for new music among, at least, the few people I interviewed.

These interviews were largely open-ended that followed only a loose framework, but largely mirrored something more closely resembling a conversation than a structured interview. There were a few broad questions that I asked consistently, such as “what do you do when you open a band’s Myspace page?” and “do you use Myspace as a main vehicle to discover new music?” However, these questions were merely conversation starters.

The interviews lasted anywhere from ten minutes to forty-five minutes. They could be shorter or longer depending on how much a potential interviewee had to say. Sometimes I would ask suppositional questions, sometimes open-ended, and sometimes yes or no. The suppositional questions allowed me to create hypothetical situations to gauge responses. I believe that this is not an ideal way to gather this information, and I will try to actually observe some subjects as they actually interact with Myspace to see if I might avoid implanting unlikely scenarios into the heads of users.

Overall I was surprised by the diversity of answers I received. In fact, so far not one person has given the same kind of weight to the various aspects of a Myspace page as anybody else, except for the core aspect: music. All respondents gave music the top priority in judging a band. Other factors included: background design, show schedule, headline, number, nature, and quality of comments, daily song plays, and top 8 friends.

So far, no attention or importance has been given to: total song plays, profile views, or total number of friends. In my opinion, the “conversation” approach seems to work well, although I will be interested to see what might come from group interviews and individual observation.

Since this study is being designed for bands to design their pages, I will also try to interview various industry people to get their various opinions.