Last night, Myspace announced some stats to show its post-relaunch growth. The company says it went from 24m users before coming out of beta in June to 36m now, and it had a separate number to show its growth with artists:
“The number of artists on Myspace has increased 340 percent since the relaunch, fuelled in part by artists including Pharrell Williams, El-P and Killer Mike (aka Run The Jewels), Riff Raff, and Charli XCX,” claimed the press release. And that’s interesting, but so is the question of how those artists are using Myspace. So we looked.
Pharrell’s Myspace profile, for example, has one update for July, seven for August, one for September and then a flurry of seven last night. Charlie XCX’s Myspace profile has four updates from July, two from August, three from September, then a flurry of eight last night.
Riff Raff’s Myspace profile had no updates in July, 19 in August, one in September, then… yep, a flurry of seven last night. Run the Jewels took the early prize for engagement with 73 updates in July and 54 in August, but then just one in September, then five last night.
And this isn’t meant as an attack on Myspace, which has worked hard both on the relaunch of its service, and in persuading artists and other creatives to get back involved with the platform. It’s more a reminder that 340% more artists on Myspace will only be valuable if they actually use it lots.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…
Myspace has pretty much screwed over it’s classic users. The relaunch effectively removed all their blog posts, personal messages, etc. There were a huge number of complaints on their help page, and they grudgingly made it possible to export blogs. But PMs remain lost, and many users lost PMs from persons who have since passed away. Myspace’s response has been “Go away, you’re bothering us.”.
I think the traffic story is make-believe hype and that the site will collapse in on itself soon. They don’t deserve any better after the arrogant and discourteous way they treated their classic users.