Judged.

However, on a more serious note, I new people who were -very- attached to bands/musicians based on interactions they had on MySpace and LiveJournal.

One problem with any online exposure in the modern web is that the bar from 'unknown' to 'trolls flooding your inbox' is pretty low. I do wonder however whether small time performers wind up trapped by this: When they are first growing they probably can't pick the ideal "Social Media" person, which may limit certain exposure and opportunities.

You don’t know the half of it. I ran a DMB blog and large online community. It was where I did a lot of my first web programming. :|

Whatever you think of their music, DMB and their fans pioneered a bunch of areas.

One of the most forward decisions by the band was to allow online distribution of their live recordings.

Being mainstream at that point meant it pushed torrenting of the live shows into the workflows of many people who wouldn’t have otherwise have been exposed to the tech.

It also drew the hackers of sorts to their scene who would illicitly capture and record IEM streams, mix them with mic recordings then combine them with stealth monopod videos to release bootleg copies of entire shows.

Only the Radiohead fans came close to the amount of enthusiasm in the DMB scene back then.

That said—if I could go back I’d pick Radiohead to follow.