Posted on Thursday, 25th September 2008 by Launching Today
Name
What do they do?
MySpace Music has existed for a few years now, however has only been a portal for artist profiles. No real money there. The new MySpace Music offers streamable music for free, monetized with advertising. They have joined up with all of the major music labels and have given them equity in the property, so they have incentive to ensure this is a success. This means legal, free music for everyone inside of the US. It also means the artists themselves are going to be promoting this from their own profiles. Users can also download DRM free music from the website, but this is a pay model powered by Amazon.
What are they like?
MySpace music competes with paid streaming services like Napster and ad-supported streaming sites like iMeem. They also compete with pay per download services like Apple’s iTunes and eMusic. As MySpace Music is a free service, it is also competing with illegal p2p networks where much of America’s youth gets its free music from. MySpace Music is basically competing with every single music service in the world, and that includes brick and mortar stores like Wal-Mart.
What else should they do?
MySpace Music has the kids who they are targeting, but they don’t have their iPods. Users need to be able to add the music to the iPods for free to really compete with everyone. The problem? Once the users leave their computers, the revenue is gone. Advertisers have their ads all over the site, not the ipod. Perhaps allowing very DRM ridden MP3s with audio ads at the beginning that are 5 or 10 seconds in length? I would be able to put up with that. It is obvious that the music industry is slowly moving towards an ad supported business rather than direct sales, so surely this would be a natural step. If the user doesn’t want it, they are free to purchase it. The next step is also to expand this service to other countries like the UK, Canada and other major markets, but I’m sure this is in the works.
How they can fail
MySpace is not so hot these days. It is declining in market share slowly while rival Facebook is rising, so as the kids leave MySpace, incentive to hit MySpace music moves with them.
Final word
Solid business model, solid backers, solid service. I just don’t see how this one can go bad. MySpace was always going to do something like this and destroy the competition.
Tags: amazon, drm, facebook, imeem, mp3, music, myspace, myspace music
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