Initial thoughts: MySpace's new music offerings

MySpace has now flipped the switch on its revamped music store, promising more freedom and sharing, with user playlists and easier access to purchasing songs, thanks to a pairing with Amazon.com. But after I spent the better part of the morning playing with the service, MySpace's new music offerings seem to cause more frustration than ease.

First impression is a revamped store that may fuel some quick, spur-of-the-moment purchases, but nothing that will really distract users from going to iTunes or even jumping over to Amazon's MP3 store. Perhaps it's not fair to fully judge the store only hours after launch, but the feel is clunky, and a little cheap -- kind of like the online equivalent of CD or DVD racks near the check-out lanes in big box retailers.

Here's a quick rundown of some of the new features, paired with what some others around the Web are saying.

Playlists: The new features MySpace has added to the user playlist functionality are nice, but long overdue, and nothing worth making a fuss over, not too unlike Apple's recent trumpeting of its new Genius recommendation feature. The basics, as reported in this L.A.Times story from Dawn C. Chmielewski and Michelle Quinn, are that users can search by artist, song title or album, and then create a playlist of up to 100 songs. By making it available to the public on MySpace's "my music" page, others can listen in, and have it open in a pop-up window, like this:

Users can also create a longer playlist -- up to 10 songs -- for their own profiles. But I was unable to get this to work. And I'm not the only one. After using MySpace's music page to add a few songs to my profile playlist at 8 this morning, nothing has appeared on my MySpace page. Eventually, I gave up, as adding songs to Facebook via iLike seems smoother, and it was unclear where and what songs were available. For instance, searching for Wilco from MySpace's music page resulted in significantly more songs than going direct to Wilco's page (the band's "Summerteeth," for instance, was not on the artist page, but was available by search).

The store: In fact, what is or isn't available is MySpace's main shortcoming. Yet the blame probably does not all fall on MySpace here. Acquiring licenses from labels for streaming or downloading seems to become a slower and more cumbersome process with each passing day, and it wasn't until the day before launch that it became public that MySpace and EMI had agreed to a deal. Yet by wanting more freedom over content and pricing than labels gave iTunes, it's almost assured that no digital music store will launch as a real threat to iTunes' dominance of the download sales market. But generating sales doesn't appear to be the main objective here (more on that below).

As it stands, MySpace launched with deals with the four major labels, and there was much pre-launch drama as to what independent content would or wouldn't be available. Idolator has done a swell job of keeping track of all the developments, and they also put together a nice post detailing some of today's hits that are currently not available at the store. In fact, the first track I searched for was Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," and not having one of the week's top-selling songs on iTunes available for purchase is inexcusable for any digital Web store.

Additionally, MySpace is stunningly lacking a wealth of independent music content. While Billboard reported that MySpace's deals with major labels extended to their independent distribution companies -- ADA (Warner Bros.), RED (Sony BMG), Fontana (Universal) and Caroline (EMI) -- this isn't readily apparent Thursday morning. Sub Pop, for instance, which uses Warner's ADA for physical distribution, had music available for streaming but nothing I could purchase.

Late last night, Merlin, an international licensing group for independent labels, issued a statement criticizing the MySpace music store, which operates as a joint venture with the four major labels. Labels Merlin represents, including Beggars Group and Domino, are not yet available for purchase on the MySpace store.

Merlin and MySpace are reported to be in ongoing negotiations. The sticking point being that independent labels are not being offered the same equity-sharing joint venture deal as the majors. As it stands, the majors collectively own 40% in the MySpace venture. 

But sharing in ad revenue rather than selling individual albums or downloads appears to be the goal, and the main MySpace music page is loaded with ad-sponsored artists playlists, for those interested in eight songs the Jonas Brothers can "agree on." The main page also hypes streaming album previews from R&B singer Robin Thicke, and hard rock acts Bleeding Through and Amberlin, among others, and continuing to secure advance music from major artists will be key for MySpace, even if it's not new for the social networking site.

Closing thoughts: The main benefit of the revamped MySpace music offerings will lie in increased streaming options, and being able to hear full albums from a host of superstar artists for free is indeed a bonus. While Web users could likely find similar content on iMeem, MySpace is still the place to go for a quick taste of an artist. But why some music is available via searching but not on the artist's page is confusing, and I'm chalking it up to post-launch kinks for now. But as a place to purchase songs, this isn't it, as the revamped music offerings are more a long-term work in progress on the viability of ad-driven revenue streams for the music biz.