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.

Never Miss an Episode!

Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

—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

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 percieved 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.

Never Miss an Episode!

Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

—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

The battle lines have been drawn today. You’re with us or you’re against us. You’re cool and hip or lame and square. No, I’m not talking about political lines (for once), I’m talking about the early adopters versus the mainstream, or as Robert Scoble framed it: the passionates versus the non-passionates.

What, though, is a passionate (sometimes referred to as an ‘evangelist’)? What is the definition of an early-adopter?

Quite simply, and perhaps obviously, it’s a person who embraces new technology before most other people do. Early adopters tend to buy or try out new hardware items and programs, and new versions of existing programs, sooner than most of their peers.

Remember, I’m Describing the Stereotype…

Early adopters in the Web punditry sector, though, have a particularly precise stereotype. Just like all stereotypes, it’s not perfectly accurate across all examples, but it exists for a reason.

What is the stereotype then? Well, your typical Web early adopter has more logins and passwords than they could possibly ever keep track of. They’re in a constant race to have the most followers of any kid on their block on the website du jour (even while they may proclaim how against the idea of follower-collection they may be). Their patron saints are Robert Scoble and increasingly Louis Gray.

They voted Democrat in the last election (assuming they were old enough to vote), and are filled so full of party unity that every fifth message for the last three months has been something concerning Barack Obama. They currently have a manga avatar on at least one website they visit regularly. They love FriendFeed, and publicly denounce Twitter while secretly loving it. They hate Facebook, because it’s sooo six months ago. The dividing hot-button political issue for this group of folks isn’t abortion, homosexual marriage or the war on terrorism (or any other petty Red/Blue issue that affects the real world) - it’s whether or not they support Loren Feldman or Shel Israel.

Most importantly, though, they gravitate towards whatever tool suits their hyper-connected, always-on lifestyle (rather than the tools that fit into the everyday lives of the regular folks of the world).

How Is This Good For The Company?

Remember that wonderful movie Office Space, and that scene with Luhmberg and the Bob’s where they asked everyone at Innetech to ask themselves: “…for every decision you make, is this good for the company? Am I helping with the company’s strategic vision?”

Early adopters should be asking themselves a similar question as they try out new technologies and stay on the bleeding edge of the pretty, shiny tools we talk about every day here at Mashable. Failure to do so can result in being considered largely irrelevant, both in the calibre of advice and review the early adopter provides, as well as in general as a person (at least in the view of the average, mainstream Internet reader).

For instance, ask yourself why you take to tools like Twitter and Friendfeed.  Is it because it suits your always on lifestyle and constant need to be in communication with other early adopters like yourself? Or is it because the tool has a genuine ability to make a normal person’s life easier, and you see the value in that.

Some Quick Question to Help You not be a New Media Douchebag

Will your mom use it? Think less about whether your other early adopter friends will like the product or service - think about your mom. This is obvious - your mom doesn’t need another way to gossip about politics and the neighbors online. Your great-uncle doesn’t need another way to share jokes. They both have email for that.  They probably won’t enjoy lifestreaming the way FriendFeed works. They will, however, get into lifestreaming if it means there’s an effortless way to maintain a website that showcases their likes and dislikes on the web. Consider introducing them to Tumblr, MyBlogLog or FriendFeed as a way to effortlessly update their home page.  Call it “low-impact blogging.”

Is it truly a time-sink or a time-saver? Most professionals don’t need distractions from their daily routine. The only way you can sell addicting tools like Twitter or Facebook to someone who actually works for a living is to show them how they can add to their productivity with them. Saying “this is the most fun thing in the world - I spend all day chatting there” makes it look as pathetic and useless as a subscription to World of Warcraft.

Is the tool an intrusion or an integration? Similar to the last question, ask yourself if this tool is a “configure-once and forget” or the type of tool you have to constantly maintain, tweak and engage with. The beauty of automation and technology is that tools (think I Want Sandy) can be set up once and can run as background processes. People are looking for ways to offload mundane tasks from their plate, not add to them.

Will it increase their bottom line? We like to get excited about new distribution technologies quite a bit in our world. YouTube, RSS, podcasting, and blogging… these things are great, as we’ve learned, but it’s taken quite a bit of development and innovation after these concepts have been in existence for them to become seamless parts of our daily lives. Tools like Utterz, UStream and Qik make creating video and audio a snap. How long did embedded video, RSS and podcasting exist before it was so easy a six year old could do it? Quite a while. Likewise, when you come across a bleeding edge technology - it’s important to recognize the potential but be careful in your evangelism. Chances are the mainstream might take your advice, try it out, and wonder what you were smoking when you thought it was a good idea.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:The Early Adopter vs. The Harsh ReviewerBugLabs To Slash Prices at CESTotSpot Adds New Features, Still Making Your Kids True Early AdoptersWill Aggregation Ever Go Mainstream?Woman Sues Apple For $1 Million - Over $200 Price CutZune Marketplace to Accept Podcast SubmissionsMosio Launches Mobile Q&A