MySpace Music appears to be a hit, say the statistics

Techcrunch has come up with the news that the free music streaming service MySpace Music is something of a hit. Good news for MySpace that is suffering of visitor numbers and page views decreasing at an alarming rate as far as social networking is concerned. Traffic to MySpace's music subdomain however has grown 190% since its launch in September 2008 and year-over-year traffic to the URL has increased a staggering 1017%. This increase in traffic equals with a growth from 4.2 million unique visitors to 12.1 million in June 2009. The site is currently ranked third behind AOL Music and Yahoo! Music but way ahead of other popular music sites like MTV Networks Music, MSN Music and Pandora.

So what does this mean for the industrial electro scene? Nothing special. From a label's point of view MySpace keeps on having lots of non-engaged visitors (read: visitors who just visit the site, listen and, do nothing else) and it remains a disaster as far as selling MP3's is concerned. Any other online store having such a conversion would go bankrupt in no time.

But, then again, it shows that there are still lots of people interested in streaming all kinds of music. And for most that is the only thing that counts, but is it enough to keep it alive? Time will tell.

For your info, MySpace Music is a joint music venture, with equity stakes from major labels, that allows users to stream music on demand, create playlists, and add widget music players to their profiles. The streaming will be advertising supported - at first via display ads (like Imeem), and later via in-stream audio ads. DRM-free downloads will also be available, either advertising supported or on a pay basis like Amazon's Music Store.

Important regarding the advertising revenue is that it will be split among the joint venture partners according to their equity stakes, not based on play counts. Meaning: indie bands will get nothing for the traffic they deliver as far as advertising sharing is concerned. Not surprising as the major labels know very well that lots of visitors come for indie bands. Clever.