«Social networking giant MySpace has made agreements with three of the four major label groups -- Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG -- to form MySpace Music, spinning off the existing MySpace Music site into a separate joint venture. The service will offer free, ad-supported audio and video streaming, sales of digital-rights-management-free downloads, and a Jamba-powered storefront for mobile music. (...) "Today represents the beginning of a new chapter in the story of modern music," said MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe. "We're proud to announce the marriage of the world's biggest collection of music content to the world's most popular music community. Millions of diehard music fans and artists already call MySpace Music home. By partnering with these industry leaders, our vision for MySpace Music as the definitive platform for unlimited artistic expression and unrestricted user experience is finally being realized."MySpace, Labels To Launch New Music Service, radio ink, 3/04/08

«MySpace is slow, burdensome and full of advertising -- the wrong environment for the demanding and tech savvy next generation. (...)4. The labels and MySpace (owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp) will split revenue from downloads, merchandise, concert tickets, advertising, etc. Such a deal -- for them. Nothing special for the consumer but pennies off an iTunes download and millions of songs they can listen to (but not own for free) on their computers. Sounds like the record industry version of win-win to me.»

«-- downloads will be DRM-free; video and audio streaming will be ad-supported

-- e-commerce will include merchandise and ticketing

-- the mobile storefront will be powered by News Corp-Verisign JV Jamba, think ringtones,. 

-- Roll out will take place over months

-- As expected, Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) are on board.»

«Only problem is, the MySpace generation also intersects with another club -- the iPod generation -- and going against Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) won't be a simple task for Rupert Murdoch and his social-networking empire. (...) Taking the crown from Apple isn't feasible, but I'll assume News Corp. isn't really gunning for Apple so much as it is attempting to ensure that MySpace remains a major player in social networking» MySpace wants to tune in to music profits Posted Apr 4th 2008