Sep 25 2008
MySpace Music: Game Changer for the Industry
The blogosphere has been abuzz the past 24 hours with the much awaited luanch of MySpace music. This event is quite a momentus occasion for the industry as the majors go all in to embrace the free streaming, social network scene in hopes that ad supported free streams and purchasing of individual sons, ringtones, and other merchandising will help foot the bill.
An overview of the service:
Majors Involved: EMI, Sony BMG, UMG, WMG
Indies Distros Involved: Orchard, ADA, Red, Fontana, Caroline
EMI and most of the indies were late to the game in getting officially involved so they are still in the process of uploading their music for listening.., but its coming as I am typign this.
There are still a couple major business decisions to figure out and some kinks.., two most notables is support for outside the U.S. and allowing users to post their playlists on other sites.., or as the industry would view it, syndication.
It behooves MySpace to get the syndication topic solved right away and follow up with outside U.S. support.
They are also planning on adding ticket and merchandise sales down the road to add some more change in their pockets…, sounds like this will be coming sometime next year.., my guess is around the time the summer concert series is getting into full swing.
Supposedly because of all the majors being involved, and owning around an estimated 40% take in new venture, they have waved the typical 1 cent per stream fee. This is a HUGE competitive advantage over anyone else streaming music online.., and possibly will be investigated over time as anti-competitive. Pandora’s recent woes with streaming cost are a perfect example of how big a deal this is.
On the music purchasing side of things they will be selling ringtones through Jamster (sister company), and outsourcing the sales of full songs to Amazon.., watch out iTunes.., I look for Amazon to catch up to Apple in sales volumes pretty quickly over the next 18 months.
Some coverage from some site here: