10.29.2008

money, myspace, & music, oh my.

on another note, i've been playing around a fair amount with the new Myspace Music interface. and since Myspace is clearly trying to position--as it should--itself as a big player in music sharing&caring, i have had thoughts on the matter.

as it currently stands, users can add songs listed by bands' pages to their own playlists, which display on their profiles. previously, a user could only have 1 song on their profile page. now you can have whole playlists. that is the one major change given by Myspace Music. but i think they can push it farther.


as you can see above, "Download" is not available. this is often the case.

they're still entrusting me to purchase songs from iTunes, Amazon, or however else i might get them. this is problematic, especially as many of Myspace's bands aren't signed, or more underground--that's, you know, that thing they're trying to foster along with the bigger names. i should be able to buy my music from Myspace, especially from the lesser known bands that i can't get from iTunes etc.

also, it would be a big community pull if there were band-user incentives regarding music. like if a band has a new album coming out, i should be able to buy songs off that album at a discounted price providing i put those songs on my profile page for X amount of days (say, 7). that way, you get advertising, i get discounted music. things like that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can buy music from MySpace. It has had a built in music store called Snocap for at least 2 years now. It's run by a third party, but it's officially sponsored by MySpace. It's pretty much integrated into the MySpace CMS I believe, so it's easy for artists to put their music up there. I'm pretty sure artists can also set their own price for tracks.

It's not exactly MySpace's fault that you can't get a bands music easily. It's up to the band whether they make their music readily available. It's so easy to get your music on iTunes/Amazon/eMusic now there's no excuse for a band not to. All the tools are there.

the girl Riot™ said...

matt,

i have honestly never noticed that, but it is super frustrating. i'd still like to see them implement a sort of "pay-as-you-go" think exchanging length of profile song play for discounted music, especially on premiere songs and/or rarities. but thanks for the heads up! i will have to take more notice of that.

xxo