MySpace, major labels join for online music service

After much speculation, MySpace officially announced its MySpace Music service last week. Despite it’s success in generating online traffic via music (more than five million artists have added profiles viewed by the one hundred million active members and thirty million unique monthly visitors), MySpace has not yielded significant revenue.

Now, in a move that seeks to successfully marry social networking and music access, MySpace has finalized negotiations with three of the four major record labels to create a digital music site offering a range of music services crossing different areas of the MySpace social network. Seemingly, this makes sense considering that discovering, sampling and buying music are all interconnected.

The exact nature of the new features offered is still unclear, however, the service will include a MySpace Music homepage, artist profile pages and individual member profiles. Users will be able to stream audio and visual tracks for free, buy DRM-free downloads transferable to portable devices and possibly sign up for an unlimited MySpace Music subscription service. The MySpace music service will spin off into a separate company in which the labels can own equity.

Notably, not yet included in the deal are independent labels whose artists helped make MySpace the go-to online source for music. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe told Billboard the initial effort was focused on getting buy-in from major labels. The only remaining major label not part of the agreement, EMI Music Group, is expected to join the service soon.

Apparently much has been going on behind the scenes in terms of re-vamping the MySpace music page. “We hadn’t done a lot in the last year to really innovate our music service,” De Wolfe told Billboard. “We made a conscious decision to figure out where the Internet was going, where the music industry was going and where should it be going. We started out with the users. We did focus groups and took feedback from our users. Then mocked up what we thought would be the perfect service.”

Should the service achieve a balance between the major labels, indie groups and the fans, it could condense all music needs to one location, allowing visitors to purchase music and music-related goods on a site they already visit to listen to music for free. Services will be added over the next few months, aiming for completion by this summer.

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