The Myspace site is still buggy, and from the commerce side, buy links still dont show up for most artists. Slow on the big fixes!
From a promotional standpoint, they do seem to be getting lots of traffic – many of the bands I work on are having higher than normal play counts (if its workign and tracking them properly!)
Jason Reeves (Warner Bros) got hundreds of thousands of new plays in a few days, during a feature on Tom’s Playlist. The Featured playlists area is a good way to discover new music.
In response to Myspace music, Imeem changed their site and focused on the basics. Home page is now blog style, and I like the cleaner design. Their Browse, and Chart’s of top songs and playlists is also improved. Their basic playlist tools, and music service is unchanged.
Here are recent articles on the Myspace Music Launch, and Imeem’s site.
Indies upset with Myspace Music Launch:
Hypebot
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2008/09/the-competition.html
Rollingstone.com – MySpace Music Takes on iTunes
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23356455/myspace_music_takes_on_itunes
The only thing they used from my interviews was “not groundbreaking” but I guess thats echoing what i’ve said here….
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/02/myspace.music.unfair.on.indies
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3775361/Doubts+Loom+Over+MySpace+Music+Strategy.htm
Data – What You Need to Know about Myspace Music Strategy
E-marketer
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006599
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/01/bmoasis101.xml
Forbes.com video
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2008/09/whats-up-with-m.html
