After months of rumors flooding internet blogs and online chatrooms, Myspace.com finally announced Myspace Music.
The leading social network website, in a joint venture with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group is creating a free music internet service, giving Apple‘s digital music portal and world’s largest music store, iTunes, a run for its money.
“We plan to really change the game entirely,” Myspace COO Amit Kapur told a correspondent from the Agence France-Presse, a news reporting agency.
According to Myspace, the new venture was inspired after the Music Channel was launched four years ago, generating traffic of nearly 30 million people monthly.
With new age media and technology, music fans across the world have embraced music digital formats over compact discs to compliment MP3 players like the iPod and Zune. Retail giants like Apple, Amazon.com and Wal-Mart have all proved that selling music downloads via the Internet pays well.
“We are undoubtedly going to see more people move to provide the media now that more of these digital players are out there,” said Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group. “It’s a natural for online social networks, because they provide ways to share play lists and songs broadly. It won’t be long before Facebook does something like this.“
While financial terms of the partnership with the recording labels were not disclosed, income methods on Myspace Music will include selling DRM-free digital music downloads which buyers can freely copy, ad supported audio and video, ring tones, mobile wallpaper, concert tickets and music artist merchandise, intertwining all of the aspects into the online Myspace pages of more than five million musicians.
The Myspace Music service will be available in the United States in the coming months of 2008, according to Myspace.
Reported by Krysten Hughes.
