News Corp Gives MySpace Just Months To Improve
Just as the new MySpace logo dropped the word "space, MySpace execs saw their own space to improve the social network evaporate yesterday as News Corp executives put them on notice during an investors call. MySpace was given less than a year to turn the newly redesigned ship around as Chase Carey, News Corp's president, declared MySpace "a problem". "The current losses are not acceptable or sustainable. Our current management did not create these losses but they know we have to address them," he stated. Quarterly losses at MySpace have jumped by $30 million to $156 million.
"Traffic numbers are still not going in the right direction", continued Carey and "we judge (performance) in quarters, not in years". He said that last week's redesign of "has been generally well received by the opinion makers in the business but we recognize the critical issue is building interest with consumers".
If stats don't improve at MysSpace in the next few quarters, a sale rather than a shut down is expected.
Its a tangled web that Myspace is spinning for itself. On one hand they can do nothing that conflicts with whatever their major label partners think is within their territorial and misguided interests. On another hand, they have a traditional media conglomerate that has given them a short leash and barely enough rope to hang themselves with. News Corp who has never understood the music space cares only about immediate results from Myspace while trying to maintain its failing core newspaper business. On yet another hand, Myspace has no real understanding about how to truly service the needs of its large independent music community. Technologists who play in bands usually have no clue about the music business and even less of a clue about how to build a winning business model for musicians so they can survive and thrive into the future. They have sort of figured out the big play major label side of the Internet music space but have been woefully inadequate in their understanding and product development mix for their independent music community which feels that Myspace is becoming more irrelevant to them by the day.
redesign or not, myspace is still an ocean of spam, and until they address that, it will continue to hemorrhage money. i can’t stand to be logged in for more than about a minute at a time.
It’s been the biggest whale on the beach for years.
Bring on the next magic bullet for Independent musicians and music fans.
And yet, ironically, more unsigned bands find us through MySpace than through all other contacts combined. The independent artist still uses Myspace as their primary netsource, but Bandcamp is the way to go for digital transaction.
I’m not talking about the majors – and let’s face it, major bands and labels don’t get the MySpace potential because they’re too wrapped up in their own business models.
But MySpace has potential to carry its user-base in to a community-driven webproperty where functionality through a full range of features that, together with linked/themed use, will keep both artists and public on board.
The trouble is, that isn’t in the best interest of either the major labels or NewsCorp.
If myspace would listen to others request to have OPTIONS to change there profiles then maybe they wouldn’t be having this probelm. There’s a place called sitemodel.net that alot of kids are going to. Its just a matter of time before that place becomes the new myspace.