MySpace launches online music purchases

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Commercial, Social Software

MySpace launches online music purchases

by Jordan Running Sep 5th 2006

MySpace is making the unsurprising move of launching its own online music store, which will enable artists to sell their music directly from their MySpace pages. The service will be powered by Snocap, the content licensing venture from Napster creator Shawn Fanning, and will allow recording artists to set their own prices, according to BusinessWeek. You can see the service in action at the MySpace page of Dani Dudeck from MySpace PR where it takes the form of a Flash module that allows visitors to preview tracks from The Format's latest album and, if they have a Snocap account, purchase them for $0.79 each via PayPal. I bought a track ("Snails") and found the process simple and painless. As soon as I finished the purchase I was able to stream the whole song in the Flash player and also download it. The download, much to my surprise, came in the form of a DRM-free 192kbps MP3 file.

Though I don't see MySpace unseating the iTunes Music Store from its throne with this new offering, I do think that it will prove beneficial to unsigned artists whose audience is mainly in the MySpace demographic and who might have a hard time moving physical CDs--once you've signed up, the Flash player/store widget makes impulse purchase terribly convenient.

Tags: buy, mp3, music, myspace, snocap, store, theformat

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Fabulo said 1:01PM on 9-05-2006

This is all the RIAA doesn't want it to be: artists set the price, no middle man, direct distribution, no DRM.

Brilliant! (even if myspace sucks)

esef said 2:01PM on 9-05-2006

this IS great on so many different levels! w/o sounding cliche', the label are not in control, and the artists can do whatever they want - release OLD tracks, release JUST finished tracks, release tracks everyone told them was crap, etc etc.

i envision a shift from LABELS to music PORTALs, i.e. communities based on a genre, where they filter out the crap, or make EVERYTHING available to the audience, or something in between; cut out the labels, cut out the online stores taking half the profit of sales, and focusing on promoting talent while supporting them w/ monetary compensation.

http://www.bijoubreaks.com

enzo said 7:20PM on 9-05-2006

Internet killed the video star...

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