By Francis Bea
You’ve listened to the posts about the death of Myspace time and time again, and the rants about the misappropriation of resources and declining revenue, which fuels the pitchfork wielding mass. I admittedly was one of these folks – to an extent – but was wary of being blinded by the gung-ho mentality and even advocated for the creation of Myspace profiles for musicians looking to gain favor with Google’s search algorithm. So I pieced the puzzle together and let me make it official. The numbers say that Myspace is not “dead,” but its irrelevance is quickly eating away at the former social networking giant. We’ve tasted what’s to come when Myspace released its new features, but what it has to offer, just isn’t exciting. In fact, mediocrity at a time when others are building sexier, faster, and better products is a death wish.
It was during Advertising Week 2011 in April, when SpecificMedia’s Senior VP of Global Marketing, Al Dejewski, piqued my interest during a panel discussion titled “Advertising Week New York City Game Changers.” Despite Myspace’s spotty history, Al was talking up Myspace’s potential as a platform for music discovery, integrated with their “novel” ad model. A warning alarm went off in my head, but I was giving Specific Media the benefit of the doubt. Besides, they were boasting the celebrity of Justin Timberlake, who Al referred to as a “key partner in this venture”
First, let me clarify that Myspace’s parent company, Specific Media, is first and foremost an advertising network who acquired the ailing social network for its 70 million users and 20 million mobile users to mask itself with a high profile (not to mention affordable) facade. Their intentions are clear, no matter how sugar coated the message is: “[Myspace is] a platform for emerging artists to throw their hats into the ring and live the dream,” Al said, as he expounded on the benefits of Myspace with names like Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.
But despite their boasting about its music discovery benefits, you’ll realize that after putting two and two together, Myspace is a consumer-facing platform. Particularly after news of its launch of Myspace Radio – identical to Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora – “music discovery” just turned out to be a hyped up substitute lexicon for “Internet radio,” despite its higher profile Internet radio competitors.
After the panel, I approached Al Dejewski to garner insight into Specific Media’s intentions, and asked him how Myspace was going to help with the discovery of indie and unknown musicians. His response was surprisingly frank. Although half of their content-driven business model is reliant on indie (5% of music library) and unsigned bands (45% of music library), according to Al, Myspace in fact does not have its sights set on helping with music discovery for the aforementioned underrepresented 50%. Instead, it’s the other 50% represented by the big four labels that they’re more interested in satisfying, not surprisingly since mainstream content attracts the masses. Lo and behold, the majority of the content currently cycled through Myspace is mainstream drivel.
While I laud their efforts to be a YouTube or Hulu for the music consumer, their attempt at music radio, let alone “discovery,” is shoddy at best. Curated by “Similar Music,” “Top Charts,” and “Editor’s Picks,” the majority of their recommendations lean toward radio hits. Trying to dive down to find unknown acts is next to impossible without inputting the exact search query for that unsigned band’s name, (and if you’ve had any success, let me know). When typing in an unsigned musician, I’m disappointed to be shown one or even zero suggestions. Granted the radio is still in Beta, it’s evident that without a recommendation engine built upon The Echo Nest like Spotify, or without hiring a team of musicians to pick apart each track a la Pandora, Myspace has the nearly impossible task of catching up to their competitors.
Really at this point, the most promising bell and whistle for music discovery is its version of Google Instant when searching for musicians or tracks. The best hope is to stumble on an artist of a similar band or track name as you type an incomplete name of the artist you’re searching for.
Its lackluster radio debut aside, here are the facts. While musicians have migrated to Facebook, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and even Spotify, Myspace is surpassing its music platform competitors in traffic per month, sans the powerhouses Youtube and Facebook. But whatever remaining glory it maintains will be short lived. Myspace is hemorrhaging traffic profusely, while nipping at its ankles is Pandora. 
Pandora had approximately 14,926,802 unique visits in November 2011. (via Compete.com)
Spotify had approximately 1,228,329 unique visits in November 2011. (via Compete.com) 
Myspace’s traffic has been on a steady decline and in November 2011, had approximately 21,439,161 unique visits. (via Compete.com)
You have to wonder how Tom Anderson, Myspace’s founder and former President, is coping with the sinking of his formerly owned Titanic. Luckily for us, he has been extremely vocal about his dismay.
In September, Tom wrote on his Facebook page, “People seem very confused why I’m on Facebook. I’ve had a profile since 2005 and a ‘fan page’ since 2009. FB just created a feature where you can ‘subscribe’ to profiles. They asked me if I wanted to convert my ‘page’ into a simpler profile. Complicated? I suppose. Why am I not on MySpace? Because, I left the company in early 2009, and like most of you, I don’t like using it anymore… not a fan of what the new folks have done with MySpace.”
While Myspace has been releasing new functionalities in parts, whether as a PR ploy or to gauge the user’s feedback, things are not looking up for its official re-launch slated for the first half of 2012. While Specific Media’s CEO, Tim Vanderhook is taking time to work on building a product that he is comfortable releasing, the competition is busy refining its product.
What Myspace has in store for us and how it will help artists, we will have to wait and see, but don’t expect the all encompassing solution for musicians that they’ve been boasting. Unless you’ve been garnering radio play, I’d suggest you to divert your resources and build a network elsewhere.
Francis Bea is a New York City based writer, PR person, and tech junkie who’s solving the music industry’s woes with his start-ups, Musefy.com and Proptone.com. You can find him on @francisybea and @musefy.
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