As MySpace has lost ground to Facebook and other competitors in the social networking world, it's increasingly focused on something it's always done well: music. Being a musician on MySpace just got a lot easier, thanks to new analytics features that give you a better picture of who's visiting your site and listening to your music. On top of that, MySpace has also worked out a deal with several prominent record labels to put a huge archive of music videos online.

On the new Artist Dashboard, artists can check out the demographics of their fanbase, including a breakdown of age, gender and location. The Dashboard also includes pageviews and song plays over time, and integrates information from iLike, which MySpace acquired earlier this year.

Music videos are now a much bigger part of MySpace. On top of the new video archive, music videos will show up in an artist's MySpace Player if they're available. Of course, MySpace has found a way to monetize the heck out the video business, including plenty of ads. Still, it's nice to have another large stash of music videos online, and it might include some that you can't easily find on YouTube.

[via TechCrunch]