MySpace may not be the hottest thing in social networking any longer, with visitor numbers and page views decreasing at an alarming rate, but apparently its free music streaming service MySpace Music is still something of a hit.
According to Nielsen data (PDF) for June 2009, traffic to MySpace’s music subdomain has grown 190% since its launch in September 2008 and year-over-year traffic to the URL has increased a staggering 1,017%. This traffic includes at least one visit by our own MG Siegler, who was happy to learn Pearl Jam’s new single premiered exclusively on the service.
New MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta may be convinced users are not sure if the service is a destination for music or not, but if these numbers are correct it would make sense for him and the recently announced executive team for MySpace Music (which is a joint-venture with some major music labels and thus an independent entity) to dedicate a good deal of attention to it. Not that they’re haven’t been doing that up until now – in fact we mentioned earlier that the service has much improved since its unveiling and according to a recent Telegraph article the service is slated for a September launch in the UK.
Going back to the Nielsen report, the estimated 190 percent increase in traffic since the service’s debut translates to growth from 4.2 million unique visitors to 12.1 million in June 2009, with traffic to the subdomain having increased 1,017 percent year-over-year. When comparing unique visitors for MySpace Music to other sites within the music category, it ranked third only behind AOL Music and Yahoo! Music but ahead of other popular music sites like MTV Networks Music, MSN Music and Pandora.
According to Nielsen, people between the ages of 12 and 17 were 2.4 times more likely than the average active Internet user to visit MySpace Music on the subdomain. Visitors between 18 and 24 were 2.2 more likely than the average Internet user to visit the site in June.
Music? Is this the new way for Social Networking?
Here’s an interesting article about myspace music:
http://www.inde...ce-1755614.html
I got newsletter email from mySpace, when i clicked unsubscribe link at bottom it goes to some myspace page with lot of ads and says “login to continue”. I forgot my login, and how many steps to unsubscribe?
Somebody sue MySpace for spam for millions, unsubscribe link does not work.
Music? Is this the new way for Social Networking?
oops! got excited about comment and posted it twice, @TC why don’t I get to delete my own comment?
That’s incredible. Myspace music has the potential to be a big player in the music industry. Think major music label! for professionals and amatuers.
Watch out Sony
I keep on saying that Myspace is still relevant and has a place in the future of social networking. Many people don’t agree with me.
Why Myspace is Still an Awesome Social Networking Site (But How It Could Improve): http://su.pr/2zsMcw
MySpace and Music …. more noise to social networking
why don’t I see last.fm on that list?
At Punknews.org we find that for many (if not all) small and independent bands MySpace is their primary web presence. Many acts these days don’t even bother with traditional websites and instead have their domain names forwarded to the MySpace music profiles (if they even bother with domain names at all). For acts with little to no promotional budget a free streaming music player and a built in audience goes a long way.
From my perspective music’s always been the service’s strong point. They’d be wise to leverage that since Facebook, even with their new fan pages, has yet to become a better option for most bands.
I posted the exact same thing in MG Siegler’s recent Myspace/Pearl Jam article.
Everyone jumping on the Facebook bandwagon around here doesn’t seem to realize that Myspace is still WAY ahead of Facebook when it comes to bands and musicians promoting themselves. The first place you generally go to hear a band’s new music is Myspace. The site is crap for social networking, but it’s still the place to go for music.
At Lambgoat.com, we deal with many of the same bands that Punknews deals with, and it is completely true that almost every single one of these bands uses their Myspace page as their online headquarters, if not their only website. The success of music.myspace.com is an extension of that. Myspace does a good job of funneling people to their music gateway, but if people weren’t coming to individual band pages in the first place, Myspace would be screwed.
It’s just so freakin hard to download music from myspace anymore.
much ado about nothing… you wouldn’t want to see the revenue shares, they are laughable…
I think MySpace Music is the niche that News Corp/FIM/MySpace need to dwell on now. Post-thrown, MySpace Music will likely be what keeps the site alive, not any of the other features the site has. This kind of data ought to keep their focus toward it.
I second what Timmy says. MySpace Music is probably the biggest pitch they have for the moment and what has ppl still signing up or accessing their myspace accounts.
just to clarify..most artists using facebook link their pages to their myspace, the workflow that follows for users is then going to the page and checking the profile and possibly checking their dusty ol’myspace account
What about youtube? It seems like the amount of music listened through it would be significant.
Hmm, that’s nice.. let’s see if MySpace can compete with the top 1.
I just wrote a comment about this on my facebook stream and then hit the share it button. I wanted it to post to my profile but I ended up here.
I hate it when a page redirects me to another site.
Yes, because nothing is cooler than expressing your own individuality by sharing other people’s works of art.
And yeah, I borrowed that quote from Family Guy.
That’s perhaps the reason why MySpace will remain alive for times to come
big up to Courtney Holt and the team at myspace music. The product is looking great.
Big thumbs down for Nielsen, The list is missing at lest 3 of the top 10 sites, playlist.com and last.fm and imeem
Nice post! It is one other proof that MySpace is now trying to find its way into a niche market.
As I just blogged in response:
I’m going to go ahead and say it again – MySpace still matters. No, none of us use it as a ‘place for friends’ anymore. Heck, I haven’t checked my personal account in months. But when it comes to music, especially indie music, they are undoubtably still the 800lb gorilla.
I truly enjoy browsing bands, connecting from one cool obscure band to the other via their ‘top friends’. I buy their records. I promote them on my blog. I grab their cool band photos. But most of all, I listen to their music. If a band friends me up on the MySpaces, I just about always do them the courtesy of listening to at least one of their tracks. It’s fun! Sure, 80% of these ‘bands’ are just bedroom recording projects with no intention of touring or ‘going big’, but that matters little. It’s about the music. Sharing it. Making it. Distributing it globally with zero cost. And that’s what’s important.
Can’t a lot of this be attributed to the migration of artist profiles from myspace to the subdomain thus the traffic follow?
My guess is that the iTunes Music Store dwarfs all of these. But it’s not included in the list because its pages are served up in the iTunes browser instead of a generic web browser.
Keep in mind that AOL and Yahoo Music are aggregators of multiple sites as well. They are the top independent music site.
Pretty good stuff.
I also saw that ComScore has MySpace Music over 20MM uniques because they include the artist pages.
So what this says is get rid of everything else at Myspace and just focus on Music. This makes the most sense. Video content sucks, youtube and all the other video sites kick its ass. If myspace can learn one thing from all this is stick to what works, and that is Music.
MySpace Music getting big may not be all good news. It depends if they are able to monetize it.
They have to pay labels royalties for every song streamed. The bigger they get, the more money they pay.
Go Courtney!! Great Numbers, showing the power of social.
Myspace’s identity is music. Facebook has been trying to attract artists to their world, but Myspace clearly dominates this social space. This is a great opportunity to create a social community for merging and popular artist or general musicians to display their talent and services along with providing a medium for vendors to take advantage of an audience with interest which =customers.
Have Myspace be the music brand management hub for all.
i think enough has been written about the uncertainty/demise of MySpace. however this is good news as a streaming music site, especially when it was created founded on the ability to exchange and/or promote music.
The MySpace music charts are a mess.
I’ve been using MySpace Music since Yahoo got rid of the custom radio stations in Launchcast. I can’t seem to get Pandora to do songs that I like and You Tube is hit or miss and sometimes the songs I like get pulled. So far I’m really liking MySpace for Music.
Myspace was launched originally with the goal of providing a home for the independent artist community (to promote/market their music content and brand) and after a brief courtship with dominating the overall social network sphere it is once again heading back towards its home roots