After gathering dust for nearly half-a-decade following the collapse of its social media empire, Myspace officially relaunched this week, and as first reported last May, it’s putting all its efforts into reasserting an online presence using music as the key influential sphere in its plans.
The redesigned social media website officially opened to the public on Tuesday, and while the slickly designed interface and music discovery features are all in place, it has arrived – if not with a bang, then certainly not a whimper either.
Billboard reports that the relaunched site brought its fair share of internet traffic, and while paling in comparison to Facebook’s 148.5 million unique visits from American users in November, MySpace was able to draw 26 million US unique visitors in September with another 2.8million arriving in October following the announcement.
MySpace is aiming to be for music what Facebook and Twitter are to social networking, to do for music fans what LinkedIn does for job connectivity and Instagram for visual notebooking. Specific Media are banking on MySpace competing not with the likes of Facebook, but instead with music streaming services with a proprietary 27 million song strong library that’s pegged as a ‘Spotify killer’.
Specific Media first bought Myspace, alongside co-owner Justin Timberlake, for a paltry $35 million just a few years after News Corporation dropped a whopping $580 million for the business, have been drip-feeding details about the redesign since last September, along with the shock announcement they’d be deleting all old profiles and data in the refresh; now that the overhauled MySpace has arrived, users actually get to give it its first drive.With its slick, minimalist design interface – worlds away from the boxy, text-driven look of old – the focus of MySpace is clear from the first click
With its slick, minimalist design interface – worlds away from the boxy, text-driven look of old – the focus of MySpace is clear from the first click, with bold imagery filling the screen, easier navigation with left-to-right ‘read’ scrolling, and a music player that takes up permanent fixture at the bottom of the page.
The ‘Discover’ page is the cornerstone of the website, always accessible from a link at the bottom of the screen, giving quick access to trending songs, mixes, radio stations, and plugs to feature artists, such as JT’s brand new Jay-Z featuring single ‘Suit & Tie’, marking Timberlake’s return to music after nearly seven years.
Interestingly, the simplified scheme is – for the time being – free of advertising, ensuring its clean look and stylish presentation remains untainted by flash adverts and media messages, but considering the importance of advertising revenue in providing financial security for other music platforms, such as Vevo, YouTube, and Spotify, it remains to be seen if that will remain the case.
Instead of handing the data of its users to corporates for advertising however, MySpace’s brass want to put it into the hands of the users themselves. Specific Media’s co-CEO Chrsi Vanderhook tells Billboard that linking music fans and artists as a larger community is important. “Artists want more transparency into who their most important fans are, so we’re calculating who those people are and serving it not just for the artists but for the fans to have that recognition.”
Many in the music industry agree, with one major label marketing exec saying recently, ”I don’t think anyone’s really been that voice of the fans for a really long time. The Hype Machines and Pitchforks all have a place, but that’s very far away from the mainstream. As much as I love and respect what those sites do for our artists, I feel like that spot somewhere between the hipster and the mainstream is a very empty place right now.”
MySpace is looking to fill that niche, and considering its potential and the statistics of its launch, it’s in a favourable position to do just that, but it’s going to have to work very hard to achieve that goal in the highly competitive field of on-demand music services.
