Just when you thought it was okay to leave your MySpace music profile for good, they suck you back in by buying up its social music rivals.
There is no doubt that MySpace is ruler of social music. If you are in a band then you pretty much have to create a MySpace page in order for your music to spread by itself to the largest amount of people. While MySpace users have been flocking in droves to Facebook, there is still no real competitor for social music. It really blows my mind that Facebook has not put the final nail in MySpace’s coffin by simply correcting it’s horrible platform for sharing music.
With the launch of MySpace music and now the addition of iLike, it’s obvious they are claiming the music market and making it much harder for bands to leave the site. Trust me, as a musician myself, I’m sick of MySpace and would love to abandon my page but if your goal is to share your music with as many people as possible then leaving it (for the time being) is not an option.
During a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said that the company might use iLike’s recommendation platform for other media, including video, entertainment and games. For the time being MySpace does not plan to integrate iLike with MySpace Music, and the brand and core product will continue to be managed separately. The entire iLike team, including co-founders and brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, will remain with the company. “We don’t want to disrupt any of the great things iLike is doing,” said Van Natta. AllThingsD reported that the unit of News Corp. paid $13.5 million in cash upfront, and promised an additional $6 million to retain founders Ali and Hadi Partovi and other iLike talent.
With iLike being an incredibly popular app on Facebook, this gives Myspace some real estate on it’s competitors site. Business Week added that Facebook could decide to pull the plug on the application, though it would face a barrage of criticism from its vocal users and would be hard-pressed to offer up an alternative with as much appeal. Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker says that’s unlikely to happen as long as the iLike application stays the same. “We expect that users will continue to discover and share music through the iLike application on Facebook,” says Barker. “We look forward to working with the iLike team to make music a great social experience on Facebook and across the Web.”
For now we have to keep our music profiles but that doesn’t mean you have to send your traffic to them. I’ve noticed a lot of bands starting to promote various things like music or pics on MySpace but linking to other sites and even their own. Can you imagine bands having to get domain names again? I think it’s a good thing and I think what MySpace offers as a central hub for music is great but the file compression, horrible layout, etc just don’t work for me anymore. We need something new that all musicians can get behind.
