MySpace yesterday unveiled its plans to launch a music service linked with some of the major music labels that will compete with Apple’s iTunes music download store.
Armed with over 110 million users, MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe said in a conference call yesterday that 30 million of these are in the music community, according to Silicon Alley Insider.
While no details were given at the time about the kind of model this new music feature would take on, it is assumed from DeWolfe’s statement about new revenue models that this may take the form of perhaps Amazon’s music store or Apple iTunes.
DeWolfe said Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony-BMG were all getting on board.
Reuters has reported that alongside this music download option, there will also be an online shop for concert tickets, as well as band merchandise and extras like ringtones.
There have been rumours that the new MySpace music service will go live at some point this week. However, it has not been detailed whether some aspect of the service will be, like iTunes, region-specific due to copyright restrictions.
MySpace may not be the generic social website du jour but the number of unique visitors per month is said to be on par with that of Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg’s site Facebook appears to be one of the most talked about social networking sites of the moment and Bebo is Ireland’s most popular destination but MySpace has always been a staple for both musicians and music fans since its inception in 2003.
By Marie Boran
