MySpace Nears Sale For Just 5% Of The $580M That News Corp Paid For It
NewsCorp paid $580 million for MySpace in 2006. Now its close to being sold for $30 million, far less than the $100 million that they had hope to get for it; and the two prospective buyers are ones that few have ever heard of. As part of the deal, MySpace will reportedly lay off 150 or more employees tomorrow.
Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital are the two bidders left, according to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD, in a deal which News Corp hopes to complete by Thursday, the end of its fiscal year. Specific Media, a large ad network appears to be the most active bidder along with turnaround specialist Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm with $9 billion under management.
Sources put the bidding in the $30 million range, just 5% of the $580 million that NewsCorp paid for MySpace just 5 years ago and 30% of its most recent asking price.
why doesn’t facebook buy it and make it go away?
The biggest argument in my mind for artists to have their own website and drive people from their social media pages (myspace, facebook, twitter, reverbnation, whatever) to their website. And the main thing they should be asking people to do is NOT “buy my CD” but “sign-up for my free .mp3 download” in exchange for your email address!
All those artists with thousands of myspace “friends” – but those friends never translate into real fans unless you take them off myspace and into your website and email list!
I just have one question in all of this…investors throw millions at these Internet companies and all it turns out to be good for is the top 2 or 3 people of those companies if they are smart enough to sell in time. And we’re all told how great the Internet is for artists but yet the best idea for the artist is to give away our music? If we worked years to perfect our craft and pay to record and promote the music and we give it away….just exactly is it that we make money?
Ray, I don’t believe that an artist should give away all of their music. I think as a promo, yes, but I think the problem is Apple. I do think your fears/concerns are the consensus tho. “Make money on free, Radiohead did it, u can too” – I think it’s BS.
Apple is not friendly, and not a good environment for an artist to sell music. They’re “way” has become the standard, which is unfortunate.
As someone who has been working with Indie bands for over 4 years, I’m seeing a shift that is moving towards streaming, not owning. This is bad. I’ve been trying to survey bands/artists to see what they think, and what their goals are to help me think of creative ways to help these artists survive, and actually thrive and earn a living.
I haven’t got a lot of responses yet, but the ones I did get are telling an interesting tale.
MySpace did a lot for indie music, but they lost their focus. It’s too bad, had they not, maybe things would be a little different.
Blame Sean Parker.
Indeed . There comes to mind only one word: SAD !!
Awfully sad for everything that happens !
MySpace was for me to reinvent myself as myself . And .. certainly thousands of artists like me !
As a final conclusion, I would say in conclusion like this : * We live in troubled times, the future does not seem too generous again … with all of us !
EXCEPTION! Just the same .. a handful of..,,Good Guys”!
*With much sadness, degianny.
I’m prefer use Facebook. This social network better, because there you can do more things.
ok first of all, custom research paper, learn some more english before you submit a post on this site…
second, how exactly is apple implying that owning music isn’t important? so you’re paying them a yearly fee to sync your music for you, big woop. If anything they’re actually creating incentive to buy music because they’re charging you for non-itunes cloud syncing.
and third, giving music away for free is not a band’s idea to devalue their music. This model has become common because bands are finally responding to their general consumer base. buying music has unfortunately become much more sparse than it has been, and bands have attempted to cater towards this fact by giving away a few songs to gain popularity. Streaming music was yet another innovative idea that was a response to consumer demand….Saying that this progression of the industry is “bad” is just plain ignorant and is the exact mindset of failing businessmen.
FINALLY, something that makes sense. I understand the reasoning behind MySpace, Facebook, Google, etc. and why they should be so expensive, but when you look at the actual product, none seem to really be worth the value heaved upon them; in Google’s case, people should be very afraid of the monitoring of their private lives and the control they give up. IMO, Facebook should have abundant competition out the Wazoo, how hard is it to create such a fluffy site anyway? It seems that alot of these sites get their starts via old out of touch investors who are hoping to become even wealthier than they already are and don’t mind gambling with a few hundred million.
Actually News Corp bought Myspace’s parent company Intermix for $580 million. Intermix included 25 other sites/internet properties.