MySpace To Enable MP3 Music Sales

I'm trying not to get too upbeat about MySpace's move to create the opportunity for musicians to sell MP3s from their MySpace pages, in part, because I haven't had a chance to look more closely at what SnoCap does.  But I'm also hesitant because I got a little too happy about Universal Music's offering of free ad supported music downloads, a move that's looking more like the same old industry nonsense in its execution, and I clearly got overly excited about the possibility that Jay-Z was going to get political in something other than a superficial manner.

Nevertheless, I think the idea is an excellent one for MySpace which will, of course, be conditional on the execution of that idea.  I don't write a lot about MySpace though I follow developments quite closely.  My feeling has been that they're making a lot of mistakes right now but that they still have quite a bit of wiggle room given their massive traffic and popularity.

Adding MP3 sales is a great idea and could most effectively be followed with additional services for musicians, such as facilitating ringtone creation and sales, i.e., services that build off the unsigned and indie musicians that are a big part of the MySpace dynamic.

MySpace is in a unique situation in which they can work with both major labels and indie artists in a manner that goes beyond just selling everybody's stuff since they can tailor services to all levels of the music industry.

The other thing I would strongly suggest they do is to not only open up their system to the many services that have grown independently in relationship to MySpace and to the products of companies like YouTube but, rather, to encourage such developments and to pursue partnerships with those add-ons.  I think that almost any service that MySpace users embrace and that ultimately keeps them at MySpace is a positive and they've done an extremely poor job of negotiating that dynamic.

Friendster slipped, in part, because they took a walled garden approach and didn't adapt well to change.  MySpace has a strong position now with a lot of resources at hand but that does not ensure their long term success, especially given the massive amount of low paying, irrelevant to their users ad inventory that they are currently running.

Comments

[Neleee]

I don't understand why the Movie & Music industry keep supporting and gettin' mislead from Myspace. I know it free advertisement but still the Movie & Music industry are giving "massive traffic and popularity" to their site for free and getting nothing of getting any benefits [depends if your Movie or Music floped], which I guess they get more $$$ (into NewsCorps hands) and get the credit to themselves. As for them selling .mp3 Music. Myspace wanna knock out Apple's iTunes and get some of their market shares. But the way their website looks they better steal some Apple's employees.