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.