MySpace: Back From the Dead and Focused on Music
We all know the story of MySpace — the social network that ended in failure and was thus sold in June of last year. But is the site making a comeback? Possibly…
MySpace was sold by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp last year for $35m – compared to the $580m that he originally paid for the website back in 2005. However, new owners, digital media firm Specific Media and investors, including Justin Timberlake, promised to shift the ailing social network and bring it back to life.
A new life focused on music, in fact. MySpace supposedly offers the biggest free music collection online, even ahead of popular streaming services such as Spotify, Deezer and Pandora. MySpace houses a music catalogue of more than 42m free songs, a significant step above the 15m songs Spotify contains in the US.
In addition, the website has made claims that around 40,000 people a day have signed up to MySpace since it introduced new ties with rival social networks, Twitter and Facebook. A number of the new users are thought to have come through Myspace’s new music player, which provides streaming music, radio modes, and a recommendation engine; but also from the fact that new functionality makes it easier for MySpace to interface with Twitter and Facebook, the two social networks that had a hand in ‘killing’ the site to begin with.
Reports state that the app has jumped from 900,000 users to 1.6 million in just 30 days. Yet, another addition to the network has been announced, and is being called MySpace TV – a social integrated TV watching experience. The idea is to embed social-networking tools directly into the TV and give people the ability to share what they’re watching and what they think of it in real time without moving away from the TV. Viewers will be able to see what their MySpace friends are watching, and make comments through the TV set and via smartphone and tablet devices. A specific date hasn’t been revealed as to when MySpace TV will become available, but it’s expected to roll out in the first half of 2012.
Timberlake and the team’s strategy of repositioning the site as a [for now] music service seems to be temporarily dragging MySpace out of its grave. But will it be enough? Without a comprehensive re-brand, will the MySpace name continue to linger in the minds of people as a complete social network flop? You tell us!
