A Look Inside The “New” Music Focused MySpace
As tainted of a brand name MySpace may be right now, the fallen social network plans to make a comeback in late 2012 with a focus on what their core mission should have been all along – connecting musicians with fans. Specific Media bought MySpace from News Corp. for $35 million, along with partner in the deal Justin Timberlake, and plans to revive MySpace as a go-to place for musicians again. Only this time, they attempt to differentiate themselves not by becoming an alternative to Facebook and others, but to Spotify or BandCamp and other music destinations of the sort.
And it makes some sense. After all, MySpace’s comprehensive music catalog is astronomical at 42 million songs, which is more than twice as large as Spotify’s (although much of this is from long-tail content from relatively unknown artists).
“It’s the world’s largest library of music,” said Specific Media’s Chris Vanderhook to Forbes. “It dwarfs anybody else’s.”
Back when MySpace first came on the scene, musicians were among the first to embrace the budding social network, and also among the last ones to leave when users made the switch to Facebook. This loyalty was primarily due to the fact that the site itself still had plenty of use for musicians, with the main benefits being great search engine optimization, a single place to stream music, and tour date information.
“If you think about the MySpace brand, to the average consumer it was negative, but to the artist community it was positive,” said Tim Vanderhook, Specific Media CEO. “They need MySpace to succeed.”
Artist/actor Justin Timberlake, the important “third leg of the stool” as Tim Vanderhook says, convinced Specific Media that the key to reviving the network was to win back musicians first. Timberlake aims to help MySpace become a platform from which musicians could run their businesses and manage their brands, and the new MySpace aims to do so by allowing music fans to experience artists in every way possible — through music, videos, photos, profiles, social feeds, live events, ticket sales, and more.
“MySpace is the only site in the world where you can get everything an artist does if you’re interested in that artist,” said Chris Vanderhook. “To do all those things would probably take you 30 different properties.”
The new MySapce is almost ready for its public debut, which comes after Specific Media took a “billion dollars’ worth of technology investment and trash[ed] it” due to “unfixable problems” such as slow load times. Later this year, a beta version of the new site opens up to music artists first, followed by the public.
Can MySpace make a comeback? Join the conversation below!
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Hisham Dahud is a Senior Analyst for Hypebot.com. Additionally, he is the head of Business Development for Fame House, LLC and an independent musician. Follow him on Twitter: @HishamDahud
Allow me to be the first to say, lol.
Can’t understand why they didn’t change the name … it’s become a joke, and that’s going to be hard to turn around.
It takes real guts to change your name. I’ve done it with a small company, and it was scary as hell. So I can understand why they didn’t. But I agree with you, it has become a joke. A new name might have made people take notice. This is a good point.
If they’re going to focus on music, they need to get rid of their ultra terrible, slow loading music player and get on board with something a thousand times better than anything else out there in order to win musicians/artists back. Otherwise, they’re only going to continue to fail…
It’s all going to depend on how fresh the functionality and concept truly are. A bad name can be overcome if the product or service is truly revamped and is better. It’s going to take some time to regain trust and a good name, but it can happen.
I also agree that a good product can revive a bad name. I am a musican that would love to see MySpace come back. Facebook sucks for musicians. I think they only have one shot at this though.
Myspace rocks. It is the ultimate stop for fans of bands. Since they got rid of the other social networking crap, it is awesome. Love it, never stopped using it, will continue to use. And it’s still a ridiculously popular website, if you poo-poo it, you just don’t know how many fans, bands and venues STILL use it.
good luck with it- but Whotune.com has far more functionality than any other site for musicians & fans from Live Webcam shows to Fan Funding, radio stations, Free & Paid downloads, chat,messaging,collaboration etc..so its already being done..Myspace was the best place for musicians but they let it slip, getting it back wont be easy..
Can they figure out a way to stop the spam messaging? I lost count of hiw many girls half my age want to meet me. They have alot of work to do!
As an artist that first started releasing my music as a teenager on MySpace, I really hope that the new team can pull off a comeback. MySpace was a HUGE tool for me, and Facebook and Twitter have NEVER been able to give me the exposure and community that MySpace had. I’m crossing my fingers this works out!
What Noah said! Rock on!
Put control back in the hands of the artists. Either it’s a direct avenue between musicians and listeners, brimming with creativity and choice, or it’s nothing. Justin Timberlake is a talented, creative artist. The best of the ‘music industry’ was born in the hands of creatives. I’m rooting for him for lead with his vision and be trusted to do so.
At one point News Corp. made a lot of noise about making MySpace more music-centric, but then they followed up with a bunch of major label tie-ins, not much for the indie musician. Hope the new owners can get back to empowering indie musicians to find fans and vice-versa.
I really hope this has some lasting appeal and works, for the indie artist. I really could care less if, like before, all the hoopla boils down to yet one more avenue for major label artists to take over the “site” as it were and hog it out. Quite a while ago, BET had a late night underground hip hop video show almost exclusively for indie artists and it was really helping those indie artists build their brand into a significant engine. Next thing you know, all the major label artists flooded the show with particularly lurid and raunchy videos (which, honestly, I am not opposed to, especially when its done by an indie artist who is struggling with a budget, etc) and the major label artists ended up causing so much of a stir that protests reached a fever pitch and BET decided to cancel the entire show – leaving all the indie artists out in the cold – and the major label artists scurried right on back to prime time. Even though I am a fan of all music from all levels, I HATE THE MAJOR LABEL ARTIST TAKEOVER/BLOCK-THE-HUSSLE-SCAM TACTICS THAT THEY PLAY TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
I hope myspace2.0 actually delivers for the INDIE artist.
But also I have to say that with so many fans fo music today (even indie music fans) having such a huge appetite for “supplemental media” (merch, videos, etc) I hate to have such strong doubts about myspace being able to pull it off. Video alone is a huge undertaking, unless they simply will allow (like FACEBOOK and TWITTER) youtube to simply be fused into the plan.
My 2cents ends NOW!
Being and indie artist I really hope this works!
MySpace was and still is the ultimate marketing tool for all artists and bands, especially the indie ones. I am sure that Specific media will bring even more listeners and artists to the new MySpace.