MySpace Music, which launched a little less than a year ago, is the one bright spot of growth in an otherwise flatlining MySpace.
But all that popularity comes at a price – billions of free streaming songs are costing MySpace up to $10 million a month in streaming fees, says a source, and the joint venture may lose $20 million or more this year.
To minimize those losses, MySpace has made a big change to its product – songs no longer auto-play when you visit a MySpace user profile. Autoplays accounted for a billion or more song streams per month, and were costing MySpace a significant amount of money. Turning off that hose is a cost saving maneuver. This also has the benefit, sources say, of improving the user experience and providing labels with better listening data.
Personally, I’ve always disliked the autoplay feature on MySpace, although execs there tended to defend it as one of the distinguishing features of the service. Users can still opt-in to autoplay songs.
The product continues to improve (and the iLike acquisition should accelerate that improvement). Another key advantage MySpace Music has over competitors – their ability to lock up lots of exclusive content for users.
And the service is definitely growing. In July we reported that traffic grew tenfold over the nine months since launch: niques have grown 190% since launch in September 2008 and 1017%. It has grown 4.2 million unique monthly visitors to 12.1 million since launch. It is now solidly in the no. 2 position behind AOL Music, and growing fast.
This should have been about usability, not profits. I really hated that about myspace.
yeah, how did that whole napster thing work out.
Exactly.
Not sure why you are speaking in the past tense, but fyi: w/o concern for Myspace and profitability, usability becomes a moot point.
you must not remember the original napster. the interesting version.
Past tense because nobody uses myspace anymore.
Yup nobody.
That’s why it’s the 11th most traffic website in the world….
Oh, really? Are you nuts, or live in Mars?
Hope so, actually autoplay option is not that necessary. It can be even irritating sometimes. Disabling this option would not show a bad effect on MySpace.
“actually autoplay option is not that necessary”
Are you kidden me? Not having auto play is like death to a musician.. period.
I’ve always been mixed on this feature. One the one hand, it’s great for music discovery. On the other hand, back when I used MySpace I would open multiple windows at once (because they took so long to load) and end up with a bizarre mash of a dozen songs. (not always bad
I’ve always thought that MySpace should have had have a streaming “queue” of music that each profile adds into, but that play one after another. A user-programmed, viewer driven music discovery radio. It could also increase page views as I had to “fill the queue” every time it ran out.
great idea Don… but such a cool feature can too become annoying when visiting pages of shitty music.. who has time to edit and delete the garbage..
There’s a term for it….. its called user-friendliness and it also prevents my browser from crashing…. Alas, only iPhone users would know anything about usability….. Oh wait…. you don’t have an iPhone
I actually like that feature when bouncing around artists
Thank god. Now if MySpace would just filter “&autoplay=1″ I would be so happy.
Damnit, I should have read before celebrating.
“Users can still opt-in to autoplay songs.”
Always found it annoying…
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to have auto-play in the first place. Myspace profiles became mini geocities sites.
So this whole time I’ve been doing MySpace a favor? They give you the option of preventing autoplay in the user settings.
I will never listen to music on Myspace. Not only because that service sucks but, I hardly use myspace. Just to contact some people every now and again. I also always thought that the auto play feature was nudeness.
Oh, I also use Myspace to pick up chicks and bring them back to your moms house.
brilliant lol
Auto-play is just annoying anyway. If people want to listen they can simply hit play.
They did the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Agree. I don’t like autoplay
Exactly. MySpace disabled autoplay for financial reasons. That’s convenient for everyone who visits myspace who would rather have had autoplay disabled long ago for being annoying.
When I first read this article, I thought that it was only auto-play on ‘user’ profiles that didn’t autoplay anymore, but actually going through a few bands on myspace music, it appears as though the actual band pages don’t autoplay any more either .
Anybody able to confirm this?
I always hated auto-play on profiles too, and it’s actually one of the big reasons I never really got into that service – I just couldn’t stand looking at anyone’s profile because 90% of them have songs. So it’s a good move I think, both for profitability and user experience.
Good… it was an annoying “feature” anyway.
This is fantastic, autoplay was one of the most horrible things about myspace.
nearly all my friends on myspace had songs on their profiles and I would often log in and open up say my top 8 friends profiles in new tabs.
My speakers would then procede to explode with sounds not meant for human hearing…
whats a myspace
your myspace is my yourspace .No more no less.
I think most commenters are (not surprisingly) not really thinking about this from a music perspective.
MySpace became as big as it did (going way back before Facebook et al) because of musicians using it for promotion and fan communication. Traffic was built up originally by this group of promoters recruiting myspace’s users.
Autoplay is actually valuable to this group to force/encourage other people to hear their music — so, myspace is taking a “free” benefit away from its musician community which is already of course looking elsewhere… although it still surprises me how myspace remains ahead of FB in music which has continually (amazingly) failed to get the category right.
So…the fact that most TC readers find autoplay on profiles annoying is not so relevant — it’s for a different audience entirely.
Well songs on artist profiles are artist uploaded, so I don’t think MySpace pays for those songs to be streamed so it could get away with continuing to autoplay songs on artist profiles.
Bandwidth, not licensing.
Don’t care why they did it, just happy they did. MySpace has become a bit less radioactive.
Just to be pedantic, “change to it’s product” shouldn’t be apostrophised.
how about, if the listener could pick if he likes to get autoplays when he visits other profiles. That could be fair, wouldn’t it ?
It really should be an account setting for users when browsing OTHER profiles, I agree. It’s a pretty binary thing – you either like seeing how music plays into the profile, or it annoys the heck out of you.
This is kinda funny, but the disabling of autoplay sure helps those in the workplace doing the sneak peek! Before I upgraded my computer, the speakers on my old computer were very quiet to begin with unless I turned it up full-blast. The autoplay was kind of “down your throat”, they could have easily mentioned the respectability issue as for rock fans having to hear rap, vice-versa, Christian members forced to hear Slayer..heheheee… regardless of profits, it probably was the cordial thing to do anyway…
Actually, I may change my mind a bit if you imagine if video ever becomes prevalent in the future… a good intro is good to set the atmosphere of the page.. oh well, I love MySpace one way or the other. Video usually comes after radio, so they are regressing a bit maybe… I dunno…
Autoplay is the worst thing about music sites — last.fm manages to do this correctly. Myspace is still allowing it optionally, which is still bad news.
When will sites learn that I have my own music playing, I don’t need some random band that my friend sent me to start blaring from the speakers — if I choose to listen, I will.
I spend a lot of time listenning music on myspace, and as a blogger, it get on my nerves seeing they dont develop an embed player… like deezer or Jiwa.
I just think that Myspace Administrators are dumb people, an embed player should up the visibility of the artist and furthermore of the network!!!!
This is a welcome change from a usability standpoint. I’m assuming that is the main reason it was done but was presented as a cost saving thing to avoid any backlash. I’ve always thought that was a really disruptive UX.
First off anyone who says “no one uses MySpace anymore” is totally clueless. The technoratti may not love the site, but mainstream America still loves it.
Second, the auto-play needs to be a pay service because I have always despised it. Working within the music industry I am forced to spend a ton of time on MySpace and the auto-play is annoying as hell. Bands think they need it, but it makes their data worthless and leads them to believe things that are not true.
Great article and great news!
I have to agree with Myspace for stopping the auto play and yes it does effect band pages as well.
Alot of band pages were lying about their number of plays anyway! We (artist) shouldn’t have to force people to listen to our music or lie about song plays, let’s give people a choice.
Amen!
I just found the music annoying. I’m glad they disabled that feature
I wish they would also make playcounts optional
Good. I hate music.
As a musician i think it sucks, i used to have 20 plays a day now i only get one or two if i’m lucky
)
Myspace is killing itself, all the musician i know are looking for alternatives of have left a long time already (Reverbnation,Openpot,Soundcloud…..)
myspace music is still a great resource to find new music. I use it almost every day (in combination with kcrw) to learn about new bands. no other site in my opinion offers me this ability. i personally don’t care either way about auto play…takes me 2 seconds to click it on or off.
probably one best features myspace had over the competition. myspace is in trouble because of poor management and a failure to be competitive. There acting as if there just giving up.
I’m loyal to myspace and I applaud what they’ve don’t 4 independent music. The reality is with new music especially if its something different it has to heard so many times before it catches on and becomes a hit. that’s why on the radio they play the same songs over. How many times have you not like a song the 1st time you’ve heard it then after hearing a few time you start liking it. Thats the benefit the myspace gave independent artist who cant get on the radio.
Seems like they’re doing what the big labels want them to and s thats to silence independent music. There other options thats could’ve been proposed
#1 myspace could’ve had us pay for it. They have charge every band that wanted to keep autoplay in there profile pay $10 a month. I would gladly pay to promote my music the format is already there with sites like jango that have pay to play. since myspace already has the format it shouldn’t be hard 2 implement. Once everyone got on board and the addition of new artists they would double that 10 billion dollars easily
#2 If that’s not a possibility they should give us the option to remove there player & embed our own streaming music.
something should’ve been before they plug w/o any real explantation
well i think that this whole thing is really dum_
i wish the music could just go back to being auto played _ Yeah cuz i mean it totally SUCKS with out autoplay’ and i you gotta press play>!_ COME ON ! know what i mean homie ?