News Corp.'s popular social networking website - MySpace, has named Courtney Holt, former MTV executive as President of its joint music venture with four major record companies.
Starting 5th January 2009, Holt, who has considerable experience in the digital world of music, will take on the task of overseeing growth and development of MySpace music brand, including its global operations. The formal launch of MySpace Music in September, has seen it rolling out a series of album previews and exclusive artist interviews, hoping to attract music fans and boost advertising, its primary source of revenue from its site. As well, MySpace Music also plans to make money by selling concert tickets and artist T-shirts on the site.
MySpace sees music as an important strategy to increase ad. revenues, by attracting users and getting them to increase the amount of time spent on the site.
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Push The Envelope
It sounds like he is into using technology to push the envelope, which is good, because I do not think that Myspace Music is nearly as innovative as it should be at this point. Hearing music is powerful, but watching music be performed live is ten times more powerful, as we all know. As anyone that has seen CNN.com Live knows, Internet video streams are like watching television now. Myspace Music has a real opportunity to become a global streaming version of MTV (back when it was about music, had ratings, and drove popular culture). I’d love to see a Myspace Music start a weekly live music program with an in-studio audience, a global streaming version of the Myspace Music Awards (similar to the MTV music awards but worldwide), and other content that will engage. Much more than what they are doing now. Essentially Myspace Music has the ability to do what the film business does when it premieres movies, which is create enormous buzz for a release so that people feel compelled to download the CD when it first comes out. What artist wouldn’t want to play (do a webcast) to Myspace Music’s global audience of 160,000,000. Imagine debuting a new CD that way. And since it’s the web, the audience could push one button below the live video streams and have access to every song the artist ever did. It would be a live version of a point-of-purchase display that reaches 160,000,000. Those live streams could then be archived so they could be viewed on-demand. Eventually, one major component of Myspace Music should be an MTV like streaming channel with video shows that interview major label artists, independent artists, unsigned/Myspace artists, etc. I mean, the cost to Fox is next to nothing since they already have numerous production facilities. If Myspace Music doesn’t do it hopefully somebody like Youtube will.