DENVER (Billboard) – Social networking website MySpace announced its plans to get into the music business in April, launched MySpace Music in September and streamed more than 1 billion songs during its first few days of operation. And because MySpace has already become an important way to market music, labels naturally hope it will emerge as a profitable way to sell it.
The social network certainly has the audience. "We're seeing incredible traffic," MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says. "It's just the start of a lot of really cool community and editorial features to come."
After months of speculation, MySpace Music also has a president: former MTV Networks and Interscope digital executive Courtney Holt. As MySpace Music prepares for 2009, DeWolfe reflected on the site's launch and its relationship to his core business.
Q: What's next for MySpace Music?
Chris DeWolfe: Right now we're continuing to work on the consumer experience. But then we'll be working on charts of all kinds -- songs added to playlists, top users with the most listened-to playlists ... as many charts as possible. We're also going to be reworking the search page where you add your new playlists to give it a more community feel. It's really about discovery and consumption.
Q: What was the biggest challenge in launching MySpace Music?
DeWolfe: The most difficult piece is licensing the music and tracking the royalties and building a whole platform to do that from scratch in a condensed period of time. It's behind the scenes, but it creates a barrier to entry because it's so complicated. There's so many rights holders and so many individual tracks.
Q: Given the hubbub around your decision not to give independent labels an equity stake in the venture, as you did for majors, would you do anything different in hindsight?
DeWolfe: I don't think so. We're trying to include everyone. We originally did deals with the Orchard and (the Independent Online Distribution Alliance), and we have a whole deal team knocking them down one by one. It was important for us to get the service up initially. You can talk to any indie artist, and they'll tell you they love MySpace Music. MySpace is a great promotional platform to find new fans and stay in touch with fans and drive them to live events. The majority of money for them is made at live events. So we didn't take anything away. All we did was add to our catalog major artists and added to the services for independent artists who are affiliated with these larger independent consortiums.
Q: Any concerns about the expected downturn in Internet advertising?
DeWolfe: Unlike other Web 2.0 companies that have started in the last five years, I think we're the only one that is truly profitable, with meaningful numbers. The reason is that we've been focused on creating a real business from day one. We've invested heavily to make sure that we can serve the right ad to the right person at the right time, and we've increased the number of customers. So that's really exciting.
Q: Just before Thanksgiving, you named Courtney Holt president of MySpace Music. What took so long to name someone?
DeWolfe: It's a difficult position to fill. We interviewed 40 people and only made one offer, and that was to Courtney. We were looking for someone who had massive experience in music and technology and a vision for the future and label relationships. He's one of two or three people in the whole country who filled that bill. Finding the perfect person with all those qualities isn't an easy thing, so instead of choosing the wrong person, we decided to interview a lot of people and wait.
Reuters/Billboard
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