myspace on SWiK

Erick Schonfeld Discusses MySpace Music On WNYC’s Soundcheck

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:49:44 -0700

Our co-editor Erick Schonfeld had the chance yesterday to discuss the significance of MySpace Music and free, ad-supported music in general on WYNC’s Soundcheck, a program produced daily by New York Public Radio.

He was joined by Farhad Manjoo, a columnist for Slate, who took issue in particular with MySpace Music’s user interface. Erick argued that, regardless of its execution, the service represents a step in the right direction and marks an important shift toward ad-supported streaming. The music industries are watching this experiment, and if it turns out well, they will likely extend the free streaming model to other services.

Erick elaborates on how music is information and, as such, wants to be free. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be other ways to make money on it. The music streams may turn into marketing for digital downloads and higher-margin goods such as ringtones, concert tickets, T-shirts, and more. In the end, Manjoo pretty much agreed with Erick’s sentiments.

Listen below.

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MySpace And HP Team Up To Help You Print Out Those Drunken Photos

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:49:46 -0700

MySpace has partnered with computer giant Hewlett-Packard to introduce a number of new print options to the popular social networking site. Beginning in November, users will be able to click an HP-branded “Print” box embedded on their MySpace pages to access a printer-friendly version of any portion of their profile that can be printed from their home printer. The announcement was made today by MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe and HP EVP of Imaging and Printing Vyomesh Joshi at HP’s Imaging and Printing Conference in San Diego.

It seems a little excessive - I can’t imagine wanting to print out anyone’s MySpace profile, and running promotions to print across the entire site isn’t very green either. I wonder if MySpace’s official Green site Our Planet will include the Print widget, too.

That said, I’m sure many users will be happy to have an easy way to print their photos from MySpace (which reportedly now has over 4 billion images). I can’t say I’ve ever had much desire to print a photo directly off a social network - I’ll usually just copy and paste the ones I like into iPhoto. But many users have been (and will continue to) print photos off the site, and will welcome the new feature. MySpace and HP say they also hope to eventually give users the ability to print to merchandise like mugs and other items, which may give them added incentive to use the service.

But really, who even prints photos (or Email) anymore?

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MySpace Music Streamed Its Billionth Song “A Few Days” After Launch

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:11:43 -0700

It took iTunes nearly three years to get to 1 billion song downloads. MySpace Music streamed a billion songs in just a few days after it launched on September 25. And while this isn’t a fair comparison (songs on MySpace are free to stream; on iTunes users were paying $0.99 each), it’s an incredible milestone.

What MySpace won’t say for some reason is what the billionth song was, or when exactly it was streamed (which would be nice for trivia purposes). But they are confirming that the billionth stream was initiated sometime last week, just a few days after launch. They are also issuing a rather convoluted statement:

We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience on MySpace. We’ve hit some incredible milestones in only a few days—some of the numbers you’re reading about are already out of date.

We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams in only a few days after launching the new product however because this number may be inflated by the high profile launch and accompanying promotional push, we will be looking to our metrics on engagement and unique users which will tell a much richer story on how positively the community is responding to the new music experience. We will continue to keep you posted on the response to MySpace Music.

MySpace Music’s impact on the music industry won’t be fully understood for months or years (here’s our prediction). But one thing is certain - they are streaming a ton of music to users. The labels, which own part of the joint venture and are also paid per stream, must be very happy.

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Trendrr - Track Compare Share

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:31:55 -0700

We are pleased to announce the first iteration of a Firefox Add-on for Trendrr. With an extension integrated into the browser, our services are quickly accessible and the process of tracking trends has become even simpler. Similar to bookmarking functionality, you do not have to leave the page you wish to track. Simply right click on the page or use our toolbar icon to submit a trend directly to your account. At this time, there are three main uses of the add-on: * You can easily track the current URL in your browser as stated above. As an example, if your browser is located at a YouTube video page, the URL will be recognized as such and the add-on will instruct your account to start tracking such information as views, comments, and number of favorites. * You may also type in a phrase, or use a highlighted phrase, and track these words on many of our data sources such as Delicious Bookmarks, eBay auctions, and Flickr tags. * Lastly, you can search existing trends

myspaceproxy,

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:24:09 -0700

how do I get into myspace when it’s blocked?

[from martti] MySpace.com - Critical Stage - IT - Rock / Progressive / Metal - www.myspace.com/criticalstageprog

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:16:03 -0700

Free Myspace Codes – MyPimpSpace.com

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:50:26 -0700

Free Myspace Codes and Generators. MyPimpSpace.com offers Image Codes, Video Codes, and Music Codes for Myspace.

Free Myspace Codes – MyPimpSpace.com

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:50:20 -0700

Free Myspace Codes and Generators. MyPimpSpace.com offers Image Codes, Video Codes, and Music Codes for Myspace.

Firefox Plugin socialbrowse Expands Commenting Features (400 Invites) - Mashable

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:14:11 -0700

socialbrowse, the Firefox plugin that lets you surf the Web in a link-sharing social manner, has just re-released its service with a couple of major new features.

Firefox Plugin socialbrowse Expands Commenting Features (400 Invites) - Mashable

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:14:11 -0700

socialbrowse, the Firefox plugin that lets you surf the Web in a link-sharing social manner, has just re-released its service with a couple of major new features.

Allow specifying a gadget XML URL instead of "uploading" the XML - MySpace Developer Platform

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:15:37 -0700

MySpace Music Not an iTunes Rival: MySpace CEO

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:18:30 -0700

Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, who has been on a whirlwind tour promoting MySpace Music, his new joint venture with record labels, says that the new service isn’t competitive with Apple and iTunes.

“I think it is a complimentary product to what Apple provides,” DeWolfe said in a phone call earlier today. “It will create more demand for iPod.” He insisted that they didn’t “create this venture as a competitor to Apple.”

I am pretty sure Chris’s record-label partners see this as an iTunes competitor. They would love to be able to stand-up to Apple and its dominant iTunes music store. Of course, these are the same geniuses who will not own-up to the fact that they are incapable of coming up with ways to save their own business.

When Apple came up with its digital record store, they all signed up. But when it did well, they started bitching-and-moaning about Apple and the money it was making from its iPod ecosystem. Apple might have sold over 5 billion songs from its online store, but the company still makes a bulk of its music-related revenues from the sales of iPod players and iPhones.

More from this conversation with DeWolfe to follow later today. Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.

unblock

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:50:03 -0800

www.tagged.com

Trendrr - Track Compare Share

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:15:24 -0700

MySpace Music Puts The Industry On The Right Track

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:11:19 -0700

I’ve spent the last few hours this morning using the new MySpace Music product - searching for music, adding it to playlists and my profile, and listening. It’s far from perfect (more on that below). But MySpace has done something incredible at a big picture level: they’ve created both a compelling music experience for users as well as a realistic, long term business model for labels and artists in a world where recorded music moves towards free.

The Music Experience

MySpace music combines free on-demand streaming music with buyable downloads from Amazon, ringtones and video and other content. Soon the service will offer artist merchandise (tshirts, etc.) and concert tickets.

Users can create public or private playlists and embed music onto their profile pages. A nice touch - 65% of MySpace users add songs to their profile, and MySpace aggregates every song you’ve added to your profile and makes an initial playlist out of it for you. Artist pages, which previously only had a few promotional tracks, now include entire catalogs of their music. Any song can be clicked and added to a playlist.

The user experience is an 8 out of 10. Even though EMI’s catalog hasn’t been fully uploaded yet, every song I searched for was available, even some obscure tracks. Search works extremely well, and adding tracks to playlists is intuitive. Depth of catalog and usability is far beyond what other free streaming services like Last.fm and iMeem currently offer. And when it comes to listening to music, the pop out player, pictured above, is excellent. I just wish the pop out player had the ability to search and add music to playlists on the fly.

MySpace Music also lets users see what their friends are adding to playlists in an activity-stream like list on the music dashboard (MySpace COO Amit Kapur, it tells me, just added Electric Feel by MGMT). With a click, I can add that song to any of my playlists, too.

Soon all this playlist data will let MySpace do even more with recommendations. You won’t just see top 100 lists across music categories. You’ll also see top songs from your friends, or from people like you, etc.

So why is the experience just an 8/10? For now only U.S. users can access the new music content. Everyone else has to wait for licensing deals to be negotiated.

And there’s lots of work to do on the product itself. There’s no way to share public playlists, for example. And unlike iMeem, MySpace Music doesn’t yet offer the ability to embed the music player into other sites. Also, my browser crashed repeatedly tonight while I was testing the service.

A Business Model

The big labels own around 40% of MySpace Music. MySpace owns the other 60%, and presumably new employees, like the pending CEO hire, will dilute everyone.

That 40% may be worth as much as $800 million already, on paper at least. So right off the bat labels are pretty happy.

Labels make more money every time a song is streamed. 20 billion or so song streams are initiated per month on MySpace today (many of them from auto-plays when profiles are loaded). That number is going to go way, way up. Streams are calculated based on complicated contracts that look at full plays and partial plays, so it’s nearly impossible to determine fees that will be paid to labels. But it’s certainly likely to be in the tens of millions of dollars annually, and possibly a lot more.

Labels also get a cut of ad revenue brought in to the joint venture, and when ringtones and downloads are sold they get a piece of that, too.

Some of this money may even make its way to the artists.

Indie labels are in a great position, too. They don’t have equity but they get paid for streams and downloads. And they have all the tools and promotion features that the big labels have. It appears to be an even playing field, and I’m already finding some great music from artists I’ve never heard of.

MySpace says that merchandise and ticket sales will go online soon as well, providing more opportunities for artist and label revenue.

The trojan horse here is that MySpace is making artist pages canonical. If you really like an artist, you can stream every song they’ve recorded for free from their MySpace page. And see their concert schedule. And buy tickets to those concerts. And a Tshirt. And see music videos and other video content. It’s going to be the place you go to get news about them and listen to their music.

It’s a great resource for users, and it’s likely to become the center of the revenue ecosystem for artists, particularly unsigned artists starting to make a name for themselves.

The Future Of Recorded Music Is Free, And MySpace Just Took Another Step In That Direction

Just a year and a half ago it wasn’t clear if the music industry would ever give up on DRM. People were calling me crazy for saying that the price of music must inevitably tend towards free because anyone can copy any song for free.

But today the labels have all but given up on DRM, and users can now play virtually any song ever recorded on demand for free. MySpace has created the first ecosystem that has a shot of producing sustainable revenue streams for artists based on advertising, merchandise and concert sales.

If it works, the next step is the fall of per-stream fees and download fees. Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is - free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts, attracting premium advertisers, merchandise sales and sold out concerts.

A lot of positive press is rolling in around this launch, and it’s much deserved.

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[from martti] MySpace.com - Tadashi Goto - Gifu - Progressive / Rock / Ambient - www.myspace.com/soundscape50

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:23:19 -0700

Myspace Addons - MyPimpSpace.com

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:15:06 -0700

Myspace Addons and Profile Tweaks. MyPimpSpace.com offers Myspace Profile Enhancements, Free Myspace Themes, and Myspace Addons for your Profile.

The Fact & Fiction of MySpace Music

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:18:26 -0700

MySpace Music is launching today and will be accessible only to U.S.-based music fans. Some may call it a competitor to Apple’s music store, but that wouldn’t be entirely true, for Apple’s strength is downloads, while MySpace has made a name by allowing streaming of tunes in the past. There are other differences and even more challenges for this new audacious venture. Just to jog your memory, MySpace Music is a joint venture between MySpace, four major record labels (anti-trust inquiry anyone?) and others.

The music labels own 40 percent of the new venture and are discounting the licensing fees that News Corp., the owner of MySpace and majority owner of MySpace Music, must pay for each song that is streamed. (The New York Times)

It wants to stream music (ad-supported), sell downloads and merchandise. It views itself as worth a couple of billion dollars and still doesn’t have a CEO. Positioning it as an iTunes competitor helps with inflating the mystical valuation. Worried that my own initial skepticism might blind me from getting the facts, I decided to look elsewhere to get a clearer point of view on this experiment.

And knowing that some of our friends in the blog world are going to do a better job of reviewing the actual service than me, I decided to spend some time talking to guys in the music business, especially the small independent labels, to get a sense of what they thought about this new venture. For some odd reason, not many wanted to talk on the record, but still shared some nuggets that lead to the fact and and fiction of MySpace Music.

MySpace is like an encyclopedia of music, good for discovering and streaming music, and this new venture plays to those strengths. MySpace in the past hasn’t done anything meaningful for digital downloads, and don’t expect that to change. In fact, none of the social networks did anything in terms of sales vs., say, an Apple iTunes store, which does result in actual digital download sales — though not gigantic by any means. Amazon shouldn’t be counting its millions just yet.
If this works, then that is a good statement for the future of the music business. And if it doesn’t, then it tells where the industry is going. In other words, this is a must-win move for the record labels, who are increasingly looks hapless and, well, unable to deal with change.
MySpace Music doesn’t fix the problems that plague the industry since the CD died. This is a band-aid to the problem for now. No one has a solution just yet for industry’s problems.
The advertising revenues from MySpace Music are going to be spread amongst a lot of people, and nobody should count on becoming rich. All that streaming revenues are going to do is pay for recruiting more artists. The sad part is that artists are going to be the last guys to see the money — if any.

This assessment from music industry insiders is in sharp contrast to what Amit Kapur, MySpace’s COO, tells The Wall Street Journal. “”We’re not only going to be their home on the Web…We’re going to be the place they make a living.”

Perhaps Kapur is right, and as one of our readers pointed out, they will be able to generate a lot of revenue through ticket sales and merchandise. But I wonder how many ways that revenue will be sliced and how much will actually end up in an artist’s pocket. What do you guys think?

[from bushwald] Can A Better Database Boost MySpace Revenues? " Data Center Knowledge

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:17:12 -0700

"Can better data analysis help boost ad revenue for social media sites like MySpace and Photobucket? Fox Interactive Media thinks so, and is using industrial-strength database technology from Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and Greenplum to better target ads on user-generated content on its sites.... Fox believes improved data analysis can help it find the right combination of content, ads and advertisers." Data-warehousing & business intelligence applied, bub.

Like Sister Site Hulu, New MySpace Music Is Just For U.S. Users

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:10:45 -0700

The new MySpace Music launches tonight for everyone. But like Hulu, another joint venture backed by News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company), it’ll only be for U.S. users. International users will see the new design and functionality, but the new content won’t be there. Hulu is now a year old and most video content is still only watchable in the U.S.

MySpace already has tens of millions of non-U.S. users, none of which will be able to listen to the deep catalog of new music being added to the site from all the major labels. They won’t be able to access, create or share the new playlists. And if U.S. users add music to their profiles, people outside the U.S. won’t be able to listen to it (unless its part of the existing and much smaller catalog of music available today).

MySpace isn’t doing this just to thumb their nose at the rest of the world (and neither is Hulu). Complex licensing deals in each country have to be negotiated before they’ll have the right to play music to users in those countries. “These international deals are extremely complicated,” said MySpace, noting that they had a ten person deal team just to lock down U.S. rights. MySpace also says they are negotiating international licensing deals now and will have music available on a country-by-country basis “soon.”

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MySpace Music

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MySpace Music To Launch Tonight. Here’s What You’ll See (And Hear)

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:10:01 -0700

The ambitious new MySpace Music joint venture will launch this evening at midnight PST at music.myspace.com. All four major labels - Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI - are on board (EMI was a last minute addition). Also joining the venture is The Orchard, an independent music distributor, and four major publishing companies. Basically, everyone who controls rights to music is part of the new venture.

MySpace Music allows users to stream virtually any song ever published for free. Users can also create playlists that contain up to 100 songs and share them with others. Any song can also be downloaded in non-DRM MP3 format, for a fee, from Amazon’s music download service. And if you want that song as a ringtone, you can get it as well via Jamster.

Song streaming is supported via advertising on the site, and major advertisers like McDonalds, Sony Pictures, State Farm and Toyota are already signed up.

The site isn’t live, but we’ve included a number of screenshots supplied by MySpace (and it looks like the leaked screen shots were real).

Music Discovery

This isn’t just streaming music on demand. The playlist functionality and sharing will let users discover new music as well from the 5 million artists (a mix of major, unknown, and indie acts) that populate MySpace Music.

MySpace will promote popular playlists from users and will also create their own Top 100 lists from all users as well as just your friends, coworkers, etc. So each user will have personalized music recommendations from their friends.

MySpace Music: So Awesome, It’s Illegal?

MySpace Music goes a long way towards music’s inevitable future where all recorded music will be free. They, along with services like iMeem, are now giving on demand streaming music at a zero price point to users, which was inconceivable even a couple of years ago.

But the joint venture also raises legal concerns because it isn’t clear how labels are being compensated. They clearly own stock in the new company, which may be valued as high as $2 billion already. But what isn’t known is if MySpace has a special deal with the labels that lets them avoid paying per-stream fees for songs like everyone else does. Companies like Rhapsody, Last.fm and iMeem pay a reported $.005 to $.01 per song stream. If MySpace is paying less than that, there may be antitrust and price discrimination concerns. MySpace won’t comment on their deals with labels, other than to say that they are paying for the music. More transparency would go a long way towards helping us understand if these deals are fair to the market in general. Without that information, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that the labels are in this for the stock value of the entity and are willing to burn other Internet players to give it a competitive advantage.

More screenshots below:

CrunchBase Information

MySpace Music

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Leaked MySpace Music Screenshots

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:11:46 -0700

MySpace Music, the joint venture between MySpace and the big music labels, is set to launch this month, and almost certainly sometime this week. MySpace has spent the last few weeks briefing advertisers and the labels in preparation for the launch.

The new service will launch at music.myspace.com but will look completely different than the existing site. Users will be able to stream music for free, create playlists, download music from Amazon, buy merchandise and event tickets, and buy ringtones.

We’ve been pounding our sources for screenshots of the new service for weeks without any luck. But today we managed to obtain these three screenshots from an anonymous source. These may be old mockups, or they may be photoshopped fakes, but here they are. We’ll know soon enough.

The first shot is probably the new MySpace Music homepage and shows featured playlists and videos. The second screenshot looks like a user admin panel for music, and the third is an artist page for Jonas Brothers that shows the new player.

The screen shots are below:

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Mobilize: Money and Friends: Social Networks Panel

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:05:41 -0700

GigaOM Mobilize conference: Mobile social network panel

For the mobile social networking panel, I thought it might be helpful to condense the various remarks each speaker made to sum up their particular social network’s take on mobile. Not to say the panelists weren’t talking to each other as well, but I think their individual insights are valuable aside from the conversation.

Noelia Amoedo, VP Mobile, hi5: General take: Mobile is about self-expression. “For many of our users, mobile is not an option, it’s a need.” Mobile browser penetration in the U.S. is 16 — there’s a lot of things that need to happen before mobile web reaches mass market and we reach the (global) 49 percent of users that have mobile phones… Monetization: Many times to get adoption need to offer things for free. Users are very used to mobile billing — there were $50 billion in Q1 mobile content revenues. There’s an easy way for users to pay so it’s about creating an application users want to pay for…Product insights: Too early because we just launched our mobile site three weeks ago. The first version focused on what would be quick to do on the phone when you’re on the move. Didn’t even think about including video in the first version.

Evan Tana, Director of Product Management and Marketing, Loopt: Where the opportunities are: Helping people meet those that they don’t know. SMS is easy and popular. Val-Pak makes a quarter-million dollars…Direct relationships with carriers really important. Being pre-loaded on a handset gives us a 30x increase in downloads. And we get direct access to location APIs…Mobile location-based advertising: The real issue is there isn’t enough inventory.

John Faith, General Manager and VP, MySpace Mobile, MySpace: MySpace Music will be PC for now. We’re looking to aggressively enter that space on mobile as well…Opportunities in mobile: Right now it’s all about communication, getting info and reacting to it. User-generated content has not had social network applied to it for mobile… New products: Video transcends the actual interface between a user having to type something in, being able to upload that to a social network is rather powerful. We just recently announced the ability to upload video directly, so the extension of that on mobile devices is the next step. We purposely left blogs out of our iPhone application because Apple heuristics said stay away from text-heavy apps — so we have developers coding frantically for the next rev… Advertising: We do rev-shares with partners, we try to use mobile to round out the web experience right now. MySpace is very dedicated to creating a fully integrated campaign. Payments: When we first started, mobile had subscription-based model with Helio and AT&T and Danger. In Australia we’re working on billing with carriers where MySpace is part of the up-sell.

Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of Growth, Mobile and International, Facebook: Mobile strategy: Our tools should be available as broad-based and everywhere as possible. Lumping them in can lead to pitfalls. For feature-based services — could be a carrier integrating a photo-based upload service that we built all the way to deeply integrated client experience…Monetization: Revenue comes only after you have a proven usage pattern…New products: Uploading photos from mobile is very popular. Video is the next logical place to go. Qik, Flixwagon — that’s really cool stuff. To the extent that we can enable people to upload directly and then share that with their friends, I think that’s very powerful. Facebook Connect expands Facebook platform to user in any browser, sessions that start on the phone end up elsewhere. Will be available in a matter of months. See also: Facebook to Integrate with Mobile Address Books?

MySpace Music Billboards Go Up In Los Angeles, New York

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:01:26 -0700

It sure looks like MySpace is spending a ton of cash on next week’s launch of the MySpace Music joint venture with the major labels. The first advertising blitz hits Los Angeles (Hollywood on Sunset) and New York (Times Square). The billboards feature artists Lil Wayne, M.I.A., Jonas Brothers and others.

MySpace won’t comment on how much these billboards costs, or what the total market budget for the launch is. Any ad buyers out there care to speculate on what these might cost?

The first two images above are mockups supplied by MySpace showing what the billboards will look like. The third and fourth are actual pictures of the LA billboard going up today that a reader took for us.

No word on when MySpace Music will grace San Francisco with its advertising presence.

The first TechCrunch reader to snap a good picture of the New York billboard going up tomorrow will get a TechCrunch tshirt and a big thanks.

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The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:09:44 -0700

cool blog - tip on myspace music on your iphone

Example App: RSS Reader - Chez Chris

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:07:04 -0700

MySpace.com - Grupo Malandragem - San Isidro, Buenos Aires (provincia) - Samba - www.myspace.com/grupomalandragem

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:04:50 -0700

MySpace Music CEO Hunt Continues: Facebook’s Owen Van Natta Top Contender

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:01:22 -0700

Former Amazon and Facebook executive Owen Van Natta is said to be a top contender for the CEO job of the new MySpace Music joint venture, multiple sources confirmed to us this morning. There are also a number of other candidates still being interviewed. Last month we posted a shortlist with a handful of them.

MySpace Music, an ambitious joint venture between MySpace and top music labels, is set to launch sometime this month. The project combines the music from three of the four major labels (Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) with a rumored $120 million in cash from MySpace and its existing music properties.

Music download sales are just one revenue stream for the new venture. In addition to selling DRM-free music (singles, albums, and playlists), MySpace Music will iteratively also offer ring tones, concert tickets, merchandise (tshirts, etc.) and branded advertising campaigns. Amazon is said to be powering the music download part of the service.

Van Natta left Facebook earlier this year and has been said to be looking for a CEO spot at a new company. MySpace Music may be just the position he’s looking for.

Don’t count on a CEO announcement before launch, though. In an interview with MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe earlier this week at TechCrunch50, he made it clear that they’re willing to wait as long as it takes to find the right person for the job, and the search for a CEO certainly won’t delay the launch. In any case, DeWolfe and MySpace COO Amit Kapur themselves remain actively involved in the venture and plan to maintain leadership roles within it even after launch.

Skip to the 7:24 mark in the video below if you want to hear just about MySpace Music:

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Google Trounces Web Video Competitors With 5 Billion Views

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:01:07 -0700

comScore on Wednesday announced its latest data showing July 2008 Web video views. And although everyone expected Google to beat up on its competitors, the company did so in convincing fashion by serving nearly half of all the videos viewed online during the month.

According to the figures, over 11 billion videos were viewed in July. Of that 11 billion, Google accounted for about 5 billion and its closest competitor, Fox Interactive (headlined by MySpace TV), only managed 445 million views. Microsoft rounded out the top three by serving almost 283 million videos.

comScore also released unique visitor information, which was again topped by Google, which drew 92 million unique viewers in July. Fox Interactive managed almost 55 million viewers, and Yahoo finished third with 32 million unique viewers.

Everyone expects Google to beat its competitors each month, but few expected the kind of attention US viewers are giving to online video. According to the figures, 75 percent of all Americans viewed an online video in July and the average viewer watched 235 minutes of video during the month. More importantly for Google, the average YouTube user watched 54.8 videos in July, while the average MySpace viewer watched just 7.8 during the same period.

Neither Google nor MySpace commented on the data, but the figures do suggest MySpace is having trouble attracting viewers and competing on the same level as YouTube. That’s not anything new, but at such a deficit, it better find a way to coax YouTube users to its side before its trouncing gets any worse.

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YouTube

MySpace

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MyOWNForge

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:59:50 -0700