So you’ve gotten 1.7 billion friends on your Myspace Music. Congrats! How many of them are likely to be into your band?

Having a lot of friends on your band’s Myspace is nice, but when you consider that many of those might just be people who either didn’t care when you added them as friends or are friend whores, you might be able to figure out why you’re playing to six people at your shows. You might want to consider your Myspace marketing strategy to better target your audience – after all, the whole point is music promotion.

First, if you’ve read the post on figuring out who your band sounds like, you’ve probably got a good base to start with (if not, what are you waiting for?). Start off searching for the names of these bands to find profiles that list them as favorites in their music sections as well as searching the groups section for groups of people that like those bands. This is probably the single best way to find people that would actually dig your band from the start. If they click on your profile to see if they want you as a friend and you have your best song playing when they get there, they have a great reason to add you and keep up with your band afterward.

To automatically add as a friend or to write a message and ask them to add you?

Now, there’s room for debate on this point, but when you consider that the ultimate choice of the user that you reach out to is to ignore or to check you out, it really doesn’t matter which you choose to do. The choice is yours (we haven’t really been able to find much data on this… or any data for that matter). It seems as though the add approach will get more friends, but the message approach will net more people that are inclined to be into your band. The idea is to get people to add your band, keep your band and like your band.

Check out Part II for what to do (and not to do) once you have the friends.