MySpace is finally going to open an online music store, as News Corp announced today
After an 18 month delay,three of the four music majors have now reached an agreement with MySpace to launch a music download site. The New York Times says:
"As part of the deal, MySpace will spin out its popular MySpace Music service as an independent joint venture in partnership with Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. EMI, the fourth major label, is not a part of the deal at this time, but people involved in the negotiations said it would probably join soon. The music companies will own minority stakes in the venture and will make their entire music catalogs available."
Chris DeWolfe, chief executive of MySpace, a division of News Corporation, described the new service, which will be introduced later this year, as a one-stop source for all music, in all its various digital incarnations.
Streaming music will be ad-supported and therefore free. Downloads will be paid for but at least they will, like Amazon's, be DRM-free. A subscription service "is also being considered" -DeWolfe.
3 comments:
This is a blatant attempt on the part of the labels to raid what was ostensibly a home for independent artists, but it shows how desperate they are to maintain their declining market power. And the fact that MySpace is willing to let them raid their user base shows that MySpace is not really serious about the independent market. So where does that leave the artists on MySpace, who will now have to cut through even more distractions as the majors spam and shill their artists all over the site? It's looking bad for MySpace, in my opinion. Whether this is a competitor for iTunes or not is not the point. The labels just don't like Apple's deal, they're greedy and want to charge more money for their subpar product. That's normal for them. What matters is that this changes nothing for the artists or the fans, and it may even be worse for both.
ok m8
Myspace was bought by news corp and therefore murdoch will make it pay
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