{"id":494,"date":"2006-09-01T23:14:04","date_gmt":"2006-09-02T03:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/09\/01\/can-myspace-compete-with-itunes\/"},"modified":"2006-09-01T23:14:04","modified_gmt":"2006-09-02T03:14:04","slug":"can-myspace-compete-with-itunes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/09\/01\/can-myspace-compete-with-itunes\/","title":{"rendered":"Can MySpace compete with iTunes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to breaking news posts at <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2006\/09\/01\/breaking-myspace-to-sell-music-from-3-million-bands\/\">Mashable<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paidcontent.org\/myspace-to-sell-music-downloads-in-mp3-format-may-invest-in-snocap\">PaidContent<\/a>, MySpace plans to start selling songs from the more than 3 million (3 million!) bands who use the social networking site. The site &#8212; now owned by giant media and entertainment conglomerate News Corp. &#8212; will be working with Snocap (started by Napster founder Shawn Fanning) and will offer songs in MP3 format, reportedly without digital rights management or DRM controls. MySpace competitor Bebo has <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2006\/07\/28\/bebo-bands-launches-takes-on-myspace-music\/\">already launched<\/a> something similar.<\/p>\n<p>Although the company is (naturally) pitching this as a competitor to iTunes, I&#8217;m not sure how much of a competitor it will be (Liz Gannes at Gigaom <a href=\"http:\/\/software.gigaom.com\/2006\/09\/01\/welcome-to-myspace-records\/\">says<\/a> it won&#8217;t compete directly because the major labels won&#8217;t want to give up their DRM). Out of those 3 million bands, how many of them are people likely to want to buy songs from? I think iTunes mostly appeals to people who want the latest hot single or a long-lost song from their youth, whereas the bands on MySpace are largely unknowns. That&#8217;s not to say the effort won&#8217;t help up-and-coming bands, as it has Fallout Boy or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iabuk.net\/en\/1\/na2006q1musicandmyspace.html\">the Arctic Monkeys<\/a>, but I don&#8217;t see that as necessarily competing with iTunes. <\/p>\n<p>The ones who should really be scared of such an effort (if it succeeds) are the traditional record companies. As music-market middlemen, they are ripe for disruption. <a href=\"http:\/\/evans.blogware.com\/blog\/_archives\/2006\/9\/2\/2288791.html\">Mark Evans<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robhyndman.com\/2006\/09\/02\/mytunes\/\">Rob Hyndman<\/a> have some thoughts worth reading as well.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to breaking news posts at Mashable and PaidContent, MySpace plans to start selling songs from the more than 3 million (3 million!) bands who use the social networking site. The site &#8212; now owned by giant media and entertainment conglomerate News Corp. &#8212; will be working with Snocap (started by Napster founder Shawn Fanning) &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/09\/01\/can-myspace-compete-with-itunes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Can MySpace compete with iTunes?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}