The only thing I can picture might be happening is that people become complacent to keeping a site like MySpace or YouTube unique. For the few times I've perused MySpace I can generally see the shift away from a unique communal - hey let's meet people around me that I can connect to in some way - to mob clanship where your search isn't for making any long lasting ties to anyone who sends you an invite but rather using the invite to build your own reputation.
The more people on your list the more "internet fame" and boasting you can do... case in point the recent Axe using someone who had MySpace fame to do an actual retail sponsorship:
http://www.economist.com/business/di...ory_id=7233972
However, to me it just seems very superficial and incoherent. You have literally thousands on bands on MySpace or YouTube who can control how their target market can criticize their own music. Just by having invites a up and coming band can control or limit any dispariging remarks a lot of people would have about their music.
Once you have so many kids being purposely steered to say hey you rock! it becomes a circle jerk in my opinion. If you see any of those MySpace top of their lists:
http://topartists.myspace.com/index....music.topBands
to me it becomes apparent that what you're seeing here is really that juvenile highschool popularity contest. It's not hey who'se the rightfully best sounding band or the most ahead of trends but it's who has the most minions trolling other MySpace pages, blogs, putting crappy jpg posters on sites etc. who are in one mass stampede to the top of those charts.
The bands, in my opinion, that are into doing this are doing it because they know that Johnny-come-lately music companies are now trolling MySpace for what's the next big thing. Sheer lazyness in terms of both the audience listening to such artists and the companies (and in some part the "artists" themselves) going after them creates spawn such as Lilly Allen:
did I mention the circle jerk::
http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McT_P...=lilly%20allen and
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl..._Alright_Still and finally
http://www.cokemachineglow.com/revie...right2006.html
who in my opinion suck musically but have the PR of a manic street team.
We don't need record companies but we do need some sort of way to stem and thin the herd... For all of our supposed technology what exists right now are flashes in the pan so far in the interwebs.
-- end of long rant --