MySpace has officially announced their new music venture, and as reported yesterday, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group are all in as launch partners, leaving EMI as the only major record label not participating.
Also confirmed by the company, MySpace Music will offer:
- DRM-free downloads
- Ad-supported audio and video streaming
- Artists merchandise
- Concert tickets
- Mobile content (ringtones, wallpapers, etc.)
Already, MySpace Music claims more than 5 million artist profiles and 30 million monthly unique visitors. The plan is to integrate these new features directly into artist pages, as well as through user homepages. However, don’t expect to see all of these new features today – MySpace says they will be rolled out gradually over the next few months.
Update (10:30am PT): I just had an opportunity to chat with Amit Kapur, COO of MySpace, who added a few details about MySpace Music.
As to be expected, Kapur had no comment on discussions with EMI or financial terms of today’s announcement, but when I asked about the implications MySpace Music would have for the network’s large base of indie artists, Kapur did indicate that the service will be open to any label that wants to participate. As such, unsigned artists will be able to make use of the same business models afforded to the big artists that are signed with the majors. It will be interesting to see what type of implications this has for the music startups that feed into the MySpace economy, such as imeem/snocap.
On the mobile side of things, Kapur indicates the company will be mainly focusing on more tightly integrating Jamba (the mobile content company News Corp owns a majority stake in) into artist pages, such as being able to buy an artist’s ringtone from right within the audio player.
There are no immediate plans to offer access to music content through the recently launched MySpace Developer Platform, though Kapur definitely sees possibilities for artists to add music apps to their profiles that can boost sales.
As of today, none of the announced features are live on MySpace.
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Meanwhile, when it does launch, MySpace Music would certainly seem to have the ammunition to steal some market share from iTunes, thanks to its huge reach in the music industry, an enormous and viral community, and the backing of the labels (minus EMI for now). So, let’s ask the same question we did a few months back about Amazon’s MP3 store:
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