Advertising firm Specific Media and Justin Timberlake want to bring sexy back to Myspace, but this week we’ll get our first real sense of how realistic that prospect is.
The new Myspace will be opening up in beta to more users, who’ll then be able to invite some friends (aka The Gmail Launch Strategy). Journalists are in already.
CEO and COO Tim and Chris Vanderhook have been talking up their plans in a series of interviews, emphasising the music aspect.
“The promise of discovery and sharing new, good music was never really fulfilled by other services out there,” Tim tells The Guardian, while flagging up its streaming catalogue of 42m tracks from major, indie and unsigned artists.
Analytics to help make sense of fanbases will be a key part of Myspace’s pitch to woo back those artists (and management/labels).
“Artists are really tired of sending their fans over to one platform to listen to music, another to watch a social stream, and others watch videos, buy merchandise or purchase tickets,” says Tim. “They really are just looking for a home, and we try to be that for artists.”
The aggregation idea isn’t new – in fact, even the old Myspace went through a phase of touting one social artist dashboard to rule (i.e update) them all.
However, a number of artists are less concerned about fragmentation than they are about the wisdom of driving fans to social profiles ultimately controlled by a third-party, rather than their own websites.
New Myspace does look good, but persuading artists to see it as their online home is a big ask.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: Wyng
Through Music Ally’s internal marketing campaign tracking, we’ve recently discovered an interesting website by the…