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Source:Mashable!

MySpace Music, the social network’s foray into free streaming and digital downloads, has some grand ambitions. Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe compares it to the rise of MTV, telling Fortune, “… how they created pop culture in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. I think that’s what MySpace Music will do now.”

Stepping aside from the visions of grandeur, MySpace Music is more than anything an experiment in scale. The site has tens of millions of users, many of who fall into the demographic that most aggressively consumes music. Additionally, virtually every major artist under the sun already has a presence on the site, with tens of thousands of “friends” to whom they can sell music, merchandise, and concert tickets.

To tap into that scale, MySpace has clearly been paying attention to other online music services that have been seeing success like imeem, last.fm, and iLike. At the heart of the new offering is free, ad-supported streaming, enabling users to listen to as much music as they want via artist’s pages and their friend’s profiles.

Beyond that though, MySpace is taking a page from Muxtape, the online mixtape service that was recently shutdown by the RIAA. The social network will allow users to add any song they see onto their own playlist, which in turn is posted to their profile. This means that users will be able to browse their friend’s profiles and listen to their entire playlist, turning MySpace into the world’s largest music discovery site.

And that’s where the business model kicks in. While users can browse and listen to as much music as they’d like, to get it onto their iPod or their cell phone, they’ll need to pay up. MySpace has partnered with Amazon to deliver mp3 downloads, while mobile content will be handled by Fox Interactive sister company Jamba. MySpace will also be offering its own tools for pushing things like concert tickets and merchandise – products that can be advertised through existing viral channels like bulletins sent to an artist’s friends.

While all of this sounds amazing, to cover the costs, MySpace is going to need to make some serious money. According to Fortune, “Its label partners want a penny each time someone listens to a song on an ad-supported service. That means MySpace Music needs to charge $10 for every 1,000 ad impressions just to break even.”

The strictly CPM-based thinking may be a bit narrow minded though. While MySpace may barely break-even or even lose money on the free streaming portion of the service, if they are able to gain significant traction with more profitable music peripherals like ringtones and concert tickets, the service could be an absolute cash cow. And the MySpace distribution model – friends, bulletins, and increasingly activity streams – makes music more viral than ever and offsets some of the industry’s typically enormous marketing and promotion costs.

In addition to coming at an important time for the music industry, the launch of MySpace Music comes at an important time for the social network. User and traffic growth has gone flat in the US, while monetization has been below what News Corp was anticipating. Music is a big bet, but probably the smartest one that the site could make given its audience and the current weakness in other revenue streams like online advertising. The service is expected to launch later this month.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:New Pennywise Album is Free for Two Weeks on MySpaceFacebook Giving Away Free iTunes MusicMySpace and Textango Giving Away Free MusicAmazon To Finally Launch Digital Music StoreReverbNation-Snocap PartnershipMySpace and Sony BMG in Music Video Licensing DealKanye West Picks Featured Artists on the MySpace Music Channel

Source:Mashable!

A couple weeks ago, I put out a list of questions that I imagined would be a good starting point for early adopters to begin with when looking over new offerings to evangelize. I imagined that it would not only aid in the ability to find more tools that are relevant to our respective readership but missed the mark a bit by starting a blog-fight by perhaps maybe too accurately pegging the stereotype of what an early adopter is perceived as.

Sean and I decided to take another stab at this topic and expound on this episode of Mashable Conversations. Sean’s in a particularly unique position to attack this issue, as well, because as a side project he runs a blog aimed at late-adopters, and has to think in terms of an audience that’s completely non-tech savvy, and how to present the sometimes convoluted concepts we in the Web 2.0 world take for granted.

Watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4.

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—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:The Early Adopter vs. The Harsh ReviewerBugLabs To Slash Prices at CESWhat the Cherp is That?TotSpot Adds New Features, Still Making Your Kids True Early AdoptersWill Aggregation Ever Go Mainstream?Woman Sues Apple For $1 Million - Over $200 Price CutMosio Launches Mobile Q&A

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 7:35 pm and is filed under video, web 2.0, web, podcast, Web apps, Opinion, early adopter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.