As the most popular social networking web site in North America, MySpace has a huge membership, especially among the younger generation. MySpace has now announced that it is negotiating with Sony, Universal and Warner Music in order to create its own digital music portal and compete with the likes of Apple’s iTunes and Amazon.com’s MP3 store.
The company says that the new site will be introduced in the next few months, and will be a “transformative music experience for the user.” MySpace currently has over 110 million registered users, and an estimated 30 million of those regularly use the site’s built in music features. In addition, many big-name music acts have music embedded on their MySpace pages.
Their transition from social networking to downloadable music provider could be a smooth one, considering that MySpace already features MP3 players and other music and media tools on its flagship web site. Of course pricing and inventory will play a big part in the success or failure of the new site.
MySpace has not discussed the pricing of their music tracks yet, but a company spokesman reported that the pricing is “going to be very competitive and in the formats that they want.” The company has also announced that many of their music downloads will be available without any digital rights management technology, so that consumers are free to use the music on any device.
This is a stark contrast from Apple’s iTunes, which offers only a very limited selection of music without digital rights management. It appears that the new MySpace music portal will follow in the footsteps of the Amazon.com music store, which uses no digital rights protection, and makes music tracks unavailable in a variety of formats, including standard and high quality unprotected MP3 files.
The online music market is beginning to get pretty crowded, and MySpace’s new music site will only increase the competitiveness. Apple’s iTunes recently surpassed Wal-Mart as the biggest music retailer in the United States, and there is plenty of other competition in the digital music world. Besides Amazon.com, music portals such as eMusic and SpiralFrog are expanding their reach, hungry for a share of the huge online music market.
In order to compete with the growing competition online, the new MySpace music site will also sell concert tickets, band T-shirts and other related paraphernalia. The company is hoping they can convert their 110 million members into MySpace Music consumers. By integrating the music site closely with their current site, MySpace could have a very good chance of successfully competing with iTunes, and becoming a major player in digital music sales.
[...] Still, Apple’s victory celebration could be short-lived, as there is increasing competition among online music retailers, and MySpace (now owned by NewsCorp) has just announced that it will debut its own online music store, selling downloadable digital music tracks, and also music merchandise and concert tickets. [...]
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