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Facebook plans to launch its own digital music service in competition with MySpace Music, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said.

With social network competitor MySpace using its high-level News Corp. connections to launch a major label-friendly (some say too friendly) music service, Facebook - already hurting through sustained criticism of its new user interface and continually plagued by the challenge of monetising its traffic - plans to hit back.

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MySpace’s MyAds scheme is to be opened up to the public with the company particularly hungry to convince bands to use the service, which will let them create banner ads targeted at specific demographic groups of MySpace users.

Billboard claims 1,100 categories of interest, ranging from hip-hop to rock to tattooing. There is a $25 minimum per campaign.

This ads took has been available in private beta to a small pool of MySpace users for a few months after being introduced for large brands last year.

MySpace Music was launched last month, offering on-demand music streaming and song downloads.

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EMI plans to enter the increasingly crowded online music and video sales market with its own download service, to be made available through its existing portal, EMI.com.

The company already has some experience in this - it has been offering its Share service to music journalists for some while in order to securely distribute pre-release music to them for review.

There’s a strong likelihood the site will offer music streaming, as it is being described as a “learning lab” for people to discover new music. The company is increasingly forging its own digital destiny in online music - it’s no suprise last year’s biggest digital story comes from former EMI act, Radiohead, for example.

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Scant days since launch, MySpace Music has already streamed over a billion songs since, the company has claimed.

In a statement from the company, MySpace Music said, “We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience on MySpace. We’ve hit some incredible milestones in only a few days—some of the numbers you’re reading about are already out of date.”

And continues, “We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams in only a few days after launching the new product.” Read the rest of this entry »

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MySpace Music may be in a strong position to influence the development of online music, but analysts and industry pundits appear underwhelmed by what’s on offer.

We know that 12 per cent of European internet users visit artist pages on social networking sites and that they are also more likely than all other online music consumers to pay for digital downloads and listen to online radio.

However, independent artists are already angry with the new MySpace offering as the service has refused to reach an equable deal with them. And they see this a potential collusion among the major labels, each of whom actually own a stake in MySpace, a place for major label friends.We think this scathing criticism of the service from Bob Lefstz is well worth repeating:

“Content is not king, distribution is.  That’s what gave the major labels their power.  They could get the records in the store and get paid for them too!  But with anybody able to get their stuff on iTunes, the labels needed another monopoly.  Hence, MySpace Music.

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Amazon is reportedly developing an online music store that will work with smartphones using Google’s ‘Android’ system - pitting the firm into competition with iTunes in the mobile space.

VentureBeat reports on Amazon’s move, based on advice from a tipster who claimed to have seen an HTC Android phone running such an application.

One signal difference between Apple and Amazon’s approach to mobile sales is that the latter firm seems set to enable over-the-air downloads of film and video. Read the rest of this entry »

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Universal Music boss Jean-Bernard Lévy, CEO of Vivendi and owner of Universal Music told the Financial Times  that label revenues climbed 5% in the first half of 2008.

He seemed pretty optimistic, pointing to the flurry of new music services the company is involved with, he said “I really believe we are at the turning point for the music industry and I didn’t say that two years ago.”

Other innovations with potential to increase revenue included possible future deals with companies such as Apple, as well as existing arrangements with the social networking site MySpace, announced last spring, he suggested. Read the rest of this entry »

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As expected, the battle of (digital media) in Britain is kicking off this Christmas - and with labels seeking to develop an (ahem) ‘more competitive landscape’ for such music sales, then the sequence of events could benefit music fans.

News now is that the Amazon Music Store will be launching in the UK by next month, offering a catalogue of DRM-free tracks in MP3 format, and (presumably) given a series of attractive price cuts on content in order that the labels can beat up on their one time friend, Apple and its iTunes Store.

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EMI is reportedly near to joining Universal, Warner Music and SonyBMG in making its repetoire available through the pending MySpace Music service.

A report claims the two companies are already in talks, with negotiatiors on both sides attempting to surmount a few final hurdles before agreeing the deal.

MySpace Music was originally anticipated to launch this week, but it looks like that moment may be delayed while the service secures EMI to be part of the launch.
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A short summary of some of the key news to emerge this weekend.

MySpace Music
All eyes are on this week’s launch of the music streaming and sales focused MySpace Music service, which is expected to see ads from McDonald’s, Toyota and State Farm Insurance. Amazon for infrastructure, weekend rumours claim former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta is the lead candidate to take on the CEO role.
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