MySpace Music Ready for Launch

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

In April, MySpace and three of the four major record labels announced “MySpace Music.” At the time I said it was only a matter of time before the fourth, EMI joined in, and it has — at the last minute, in fact. And Thursday at 12:00 AM EDT the site is set to go live.

Once it goes live, MySpace users can will be able to create and stream whole playlists of music from all four major labels as well as independents. The whole thing is ad-supported and free.

Want to buy a song? Amazon MP3 will be tightly integrated into the site, so you can buy DRM-free MP3s easily. And if you want a ringtone, there’s Jamster for you.

And, while this is definitely going to be a big deal (heck, I’ll even dust off my MySpace account), this is just the first phase of the rollout, according to their press release. Excerpts:

Today’s announcement marks the first phase in an iterative global product rollout which will ultimately include a vast catalogue of premium and promotional content, a wide selection of new user-to-user sharing tools, and additional e-commerce opportunities for artists including merchandise and ticketing. Starting today in the U.S. and launching internationally in the coming months, the new MySpace Music functionality will also be available in Spanish and fully localized for the MySpace en Español community. Select products including the newly designed music player will be available globally to MySpace’s more than 120 million global users (comScore July 2008).

The first phase of the new MySpace Music unveils:

• The new, ‘MyMusic,’ personal music management toolset
• Free and unlimited ad-supported, full-length audio streaming
• Free and unlimited playlist functionality
• Free discography and content catalogues for SONY BMG, UMG and WMG artists
• DRM-free MP3 music e-commerce downloads powered by Amazon MP3
• Ringtone e-commerce powered by Jamster

Yep, the EMI agreement was so late it didn’t make the press release, as it’s not mentioned above. Caveats: some music won’t be available for streaming (e.g., The Beatles).

Users can also add a playlist to their profile, but profile playlists will be limited to 10 songs. On the separate MySpace Music page, you can add up to 100 songs per playlist.

For artists, another nice feature: on MySpace Music, the music listed on an artist’s profile page will have “Add” and “Buy” buttons. Hit Add and it goes to your playlist. Hit buy, well you can figure that out. Amazon users can use their existing accounts, if any.

You can read the full press release here (.PDF).