Social Media

MySpace Music Mints A Messy Music Feed

But will fans flock to a new section curated by the major labels and dominated by ads?

(Updated) Music helped build MySpace and the top ranking social networker is continuing the tradition. Perhaps acknowledging that user generated content is no longer enough, the new section dubbed The Music Feed features original content from three bands whose music is distributed by one of MySpace Music's major label owner/partners.

MySpace Music Feed
Eminem (Universal), Passion Pit (French Kiss/Sony) and Phoenix (EMI) hold the first slots on the newly minted page. McDonald's McCafe sponsors and the section's almost unreadable 4 inch tall site banner (click graphic above to enlarge) plus…

a 6 inch tall McCafe video ad followed by a 2 inch tall McDonald's banner ad mean that users need to scroll down a full foot to see the first inch tall Featured Artist photo. That thin section is followed by another foot of MySpace Friends and comments.

Poor design, made worse by policies encouraging individualization and bling on personal and band pages, has been a stumbling block for MySpace; and here on new company controlled pages, the results are no better.

What do you think of  the new MySpace Music Feed?

Bruce Houghton on 05/28/2009 in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (7)
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7 Comments

  1. More shameless self-promotion makes the content of the page relatively worthless and forgettable. I liked the short section of the video talking about new releases, but I don’t want to watch a six-minute video to get that information.

  3. I agree: this came off as a video version of the rotating ads on the Myspace Music home page. That won’t go over well with Myspace users. Additionally, the one thing that MTV knew with their music programs was that they had to have hosts and content that reflected the diversity of their viewership, and that had credibility within the music communities they were covering and serving. So, for example, they found Sway, a person well respected in the hip hop community, to report on hip hop music, etc. Judging from the hosts, correspondent, and artists covered in the first episode, it doesn’t seem like there was a great deal of discussion about setting the show up to cover the urban or Latin music scenes in upcoming episodes (they certainly didn’t do anything to get those audiences interested in coming back to the program). For example, it would have been great to have an interview with Eminem by a correspondent from Myspace Hip-Hop (DJ Diamond Kuts, etc.). Being that three of the top four music genres on Myspace are “urban” (1. Hip-hop: 2,682,753, 2. Rap: 2,534,305, 3. Rock: 1,898,020. 4. R&B: 1,672,610), they could have done a much better job of reaching enticing that audience to come back. Ironically, McDonald’s has a terrific outreach to African-American and Latino communities through music, so hopefully, Myspace will get The Music Feed more in line with the brand values of the show’s sponsor in reaching out to everyone in upcoming episodes.

  4. I don’t understand exactly what the purpose of this is for? Obviously it’s sales of those three artists’ music, but what other purpose does this have in terms of increasing MySpace’s hold over social networking users? This seems so very worthless. It’s definitely not something I would visit ever again, as it hold no purpose for me. What can I do at the website? I have already purchased Passion Pit and Phoenix and I am well aware of the artists beforehand. I am not interested in Eminem’s work and I am aware of him as well. So, if it’s not exposing me to new music and there’s nothing else to do at the site, why would I return?

  5. I use Google’s Chrome browser, and the 2nd add doesn’t even display, just a big grey box, and I just updated Chrome and Flash to the latest version.
    Other than that, the page is really not that much worse than Yahoo music, except for the lack of choices in terms of musical content & genres. It’s just 1 big paid AD. Will most likely fail to generate any significant returns. And those bands will end up broke.
    So go listen to Big Blue X… http://www.BigBlueX.com

  7. MySpace Music Feed is another weak play that caters to major labels and continues to alienate MySpace’s immense and totally under served emerging, unsigned artist community upon which the site built much of its size. Without developing a clear strategy that enhances the ability of its emerging, unsigned artist community to gain more exposure and better monetize themselves, MySpace continues to make bad music business decisions, again shooting itself in the foot and adding to the potential for its own demise.

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