Myspace Has New Plans for Music Videos
MySpace has announced what it says is “the next phase” of its music offering with a wave of new products and tools now available to artists and fans.
As well as allowing users to buy music on iTunes in addition to Amazon MP3, the global rollout of a new Music Videos experience has begun, while the “MySpace Artist Dashboard” - a free data and analytics tool for artists - has hit beta.
MySpace Music Videos launches with the boast of being one of the most comprehensive online collections of music videos available anywhere.
The MySpace Artist Dashboard offers detailed analytics about artist’s content within the MySpace community offering trending data and info on song plays, profile views, friend count, and profile visitors.
While tweets and social-network feeds were the buzz on Thursday at a Web 2.0 Summit here, MySpace was fortifying its position as an online music venue.
In a theater not far from a night club where Microsoft was celebrating the worldwide launch of its new Windows 7 operating system late Wednesday night, MySpace devotees queued around the block to get into a “Secret Show.”
About a thousand MySpace Music members in a prime, youthful gadget-loving demographic were packed in front of the stage when hot US band Weezer strode out in matching white track suits.
“Shhh… This is a secret,” Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo playfully told the adoring crowd. “You can’t tell anyone… no tweeting, no Facebook, and if your parents ask, you were just hanging out listening to music with some friends.”
The intimate setting was a change of pace for Weezer, which is known for being able to fill stadiums for concerts.
Secret Concerts are among the ways MySpace Music builds loyalty among members of its online community.
News Corp-owned MySpace has turned itself into an Internet haven for music makers and fans in the wake of being eclipsed by social-networking rival when it comes to sheer size.
MySpace on Wednesday indirectly expanded its reach by making its licensed music videos available at rival social networking services including Facebook through a popular application made by iLike.