Are Personal Websites Dead?

Is there any value to having your own personality website?

[tomthumb2000]

I've always believed that if you're an artist, writer or musician or whatever it's best to have your own website. That way you get taken seriously, it shows you're professional etc

But when it comes to say, music, i've seen that many bands don't bother with their own site and just go the myspace route. Because big bands also go with myspace there's no loss of face in also having a page there and the inbuilt technology makes sure that your pages look good, they work and have tools that you might have to pay a coder a fortune to implement.

Is that becoming true of any other profession? does a page on blogspot or a similar site hold water?

We're into our second decade with the internet and still the technological barriers of setting up and designing your own site are beyond the reach of most people. Html is still completely unintuitive to most people and even if they shell out $1000 to get a site set up there's no guarantee they'll be able to manage it.

So what is the value of a personal website? Is it worth it?

[idolw]

you can have a website in a free service like myspace or blogspot.

i guess more and more people have websites. they just do not want to hassle with all the technical stuff and choose ready solutions

[StoutFiles]

Smaller bands that don't have the money for a personal website, sure.

Bands like Greenday and U2 have their own websites. It really depends on the size/popularity of the band.

[Staffa]

Why not have both ?
I am not familiar with myspace but if you also build a page there could you not link from it to your site ?