August 20, 2008
Writes Fast Company writer Ellen McGirt in this month's cover story on MySpace: " As Michael Nash, EVP of digital strategy and business development for Warner Music, puts it, 'Unlocking the social value in the context of an online community is one of our most important priorities.' Nash, who is on the board of the new venture, worked with MySpace in its pre-Murdoch days, developing promotions with acts including REM. 'About 20% to 30% of total traffic on MySpace is music traffic,' he says. 'We saw that lightning in a bottle, the social interaction around music and fans.'"
For Nash, the MySpace deal may be just the thing to save the music industry from destruction, at least for a while. 'The traditional music model has really already sort of expired,' he admits. 'We were seeing tremendous value in our content, but not a lot of revenue being developed.' The dream: As users begin to organize music they like into streaming playlists that can be shared with friends (and that other users can vote up, Digg-style, or subscribe to), the computer becomes a community-generated radio. Supported by advertising. And with the already existing MySpace swirl around celebrities and events, the industry envisions hordes of fans flocking to concerts, which are much easier to profit from. 'We needed a completely different business model to unlock that value,' Nash says."
Comments | 4 Total
August 20, 2008 at 11:28am by Rip Empson
The most important feature of MySpace's music section is that no-name bands and music acts are featured in the same place as the biggest names in the world. If MySpace can create more awareness for the smaller bands, giving them access to the things they wouldn't be able to otherwise, then this has to be a game-changer. If a small band were able to put their record out on a MySpace label, for example, that would change the industry and would no doubt push record labels past the breaking point. But at this point, it seems to me, record labels are still able to give bands advantages they struggle to get anywhere else (production, distribution, management, etc.). We are witnessing an enormous sea-change in the music industry thanks to the likes of Napster, Radiohead, Pandora, etc., but are record labels really going away in the next few years? I would be surprised...
August 20, 2008 at 1:10pm by Gene Lu
MySpace, the future of music?? MySpace has lost my trust and perhaps others with the site whoring out to ads and being convoluted to stalkers, teenage bs, etc.
The site has spread itself thin by covering too much all at once and should really refocus on its roots, which is music. With sites like Facebook already dominating and innovating on the social networking aspect, MySpace should do the same, but for music.
August 21, 2008 at 12:17am by David Mullings
(1) Imeem.com is the #1 music streaming site in the USA after surpassing Yahoo in May. MySpace can't be the future if it isn't #1 or #2 can it?
(2) The music industry is not in trouble, it is the business model of the record labels that is in trouble.
Musicians still make the bulk of their money from touring and social media allows them to connect with their fans even better.
The future of the music industry is the death of the current label structure and the rise of independent musicians who are now able to market and promote themselves quickly and easily thanks to things like Imeem, MySpace and YouTube.
Music has always been social, hence the reason people burn copies of songs or CDs for their friends. Fans beget fans and social media platforms that make that sharing and community development easy erode the power of labels.
Labels unfortunately cling to a pre-digital business model but even LiveNation gets what music is really about, and it's not paying for airplay.
August 21, 2008 at 4:21am by Ben Murphy
"MySpace, the future of music"? Pretty presumptive. Spoken like a man who's trying to convince himself that the price tag was worth it... Certainly what MySpace has done to music is the future of music. But MySpace itself is not the future...