When Googling a band, artist or DJ, it’s more than likely their listing on Wikipedia will pop up in the first few results, along with their official website and MySpace page. It’s been that way for a while, but over the past 6 months a rather significant shift has occurred, with research released to Billboard by Yahoo indicating punters are now more than twice as likely to go to Wikipedia first, instead of MySpace. And, in many cases, this makes an artist’s Wikipedia listing even more popular than their official website.

In an article posted on news.com.au – which is owned by Newscorp, who also coincidentally own MySpace – John Lenac, Yahoo’s head of programming and label relations, made the seemingly contentious statement (considering where it was being published); “The interest that people had to go to MySpace to find out more about their favourite band is waning in favour of going to Wikipedia.”

It’s a rather staggering statement, especially considering most bands and artists completely ignore the upkeep of their Wikipedia page, instead choosing to leave it to fans to add and revise the information. This was highlighted in an interview inthemix.com.au conducted with UK nu-rave kids Klaxons while on tour in October, 2007. When asked about the accuracy of some details included on their Wikipedia page, the band’s keyboardist/vocalist James Righton heatedly remarked that the page was “peddling lies!”

Are web browsers over not knowing exactly what they’re going to find when they visit an artist’s MySpace page, especially now they’ve become 100% promotional? We’ve all had the misfortune of visiting a page that’s so chock full of videos, pictures and audio streams that it makes your browser stumble and choke as it attempts to load. Will Wikipedia win out because of its clean, concise and (arguably) unbiased presentation of information?

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the shift is that not many bands or artists (or their management, for that matter) are even aware that Wikipedia exists, or that they are able to contribute to its maintenance. Wikipedia have stated they won’t be adding the functionality to include video or audio streams on their pages in the future. Perhaps that will prove to be MySpace’s saving grace.