The relative decline of myspace vs. other social media sites such as facebook and twitter has been mentioned in class and well documented in the press.
A recent NY Times article (June 4th) looked at how the newscorp site was trying to remedy to this situation.
First, the content: the site allows users to research and stream for free entire songs without registration, from a library which is arguably the internet's largest legal music catalogue. As mentioned in the article: "Try to find Motley Crue's "Dr. Feelgood in Pandora's music library" !
If the longtail argument works, the overall audience of the site should go up.
Then comes the next step: How can myspace monetize this traffic?
The model is as follows: The site has become effectively an amazon.com affiliate. Visitors are directed to the amazon website, where they can buy the artist's album.
The MP3 files are not encrypted and will be playable on every computer (Apple anyone?).
Economicswise, Amazon splits its revenues with Myspace and the record labels (and hence the musicians).
In my opinion this strategy brings 2 questions. First, is it myspace's ambition to compete with iTunes? Second, is the site still a social networking site? the author of the article asks in the end if kids will continue to visit myspace once their parents, who are able to find Grateful Dead and other old rarities, also frequent the site. In my opinion, those parents are far more likely to generate monetization for myspace... but as of now they still only represent a fraction of the audience, and this audience is volatile.
I believe myspace is walking on a tight rope!
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