Myspace Pulls The Rug From Under Spotify’s Feet – Summary of Todays Big Myspace Update

Today has seen the launch of the latest incarnation of Myspace Music. Unlike previous updates, these are not simply a few design changes but a complete shift in the News Corporation owned company’s offering.

Where Spotify has led the way in streamed music, Myspace appears to have built on this with a much larger music library and, this is the hook, for free. Music streaming from Myspace will continue to be ad funded but crucially, unlike Spotify, adverts will not interrupt listeners between songs. Courtney Holt, President of Myspace Music told BBC 6 Music:

“We provide streaming audio, video, a comprehensive suite of artist tools, original content and programming all wrapped up together in one nice package”

Also now available on the new improved site will be DRM free MP3 downloads in conjunction with Apple iTunes.

Possibly though, this move has come too late with Last.fm seeing around 40 million monthly users of its music streaming service and Spotify gaining a great deal of press and publicity. Spotify has also made music more social by allowing playlist sharing. Myspace has taken note of this and now also offers users the option of sharing their Myspace playlists (although for some reason they are currently featuring a playlist by that epitome of d-list narcissistic vanity, Jordan).

I’m sure it’s in the pipeline but I look forward to the iphone app (as they have just partnered with Apple for the DRM free downloads, or desktop player. What Spotify and Last.fm have done really well is allow users to listen to their music as easily as posibble, Last.fm with it’s ‘scrobbling‘ and Spotify with its desktop application and both with their respective iphone apps. I envisage a whole lot more partnering if they are to gain back market share. Last.fm did this well when it partnered with X-box Live and saw 1 million additional users sign up in just a few days (300 new users per minute). We are in the age of collaboration for mutual gain.

Fiat are the first to be involved with the new playlist function with following their successful ‘500c’ Spotify playlist. Their Myspace page allows users to select a playlist of song from any of the last 16 years, to mark the 16th birthday of the Fiat Punto. They only have three friends though so far…

Spotify To Take On Myspace By Allowing Music Uploads?

One of the (few) good points remaining that Myspace has to offer is it’s music upload function. Artists can, with relative ease, create a profile and upload their music to their page. This then allows users of Myspace to listen to tracks and discover favourite new bands.

Spotify has now hinted that it too will soon be allowing artists to upload their own tracks to the music streaming service.  Here’s what they say on their website:

“We are constantly adding albums and tracks to Spotify and want to offer our users all of the music in the world. We aim to release an uploading platform relatively soon so that content owners can partner with us easily.”

Spotify is currently allowing artists to register their interest and no date is set nor details given on how this will work. It will probably however only allow labels or signed artists to upload rather than every Tom, Dick and Arctic Monkey to upload music.

Watch this space!

Universal and Bruno Give a Lesson in Social Media

When was the last time you saw a film released with out an official website? The answer is probably quite a long time ago. All of this summers releases will no doubt guide audiences to official websites. These sites will no doubt provide some kind of movie trailer, a few pics, a news and events section and of course the film’s release date.

Bruno doesn’t. Nope not an official website in sight. The closest you get is a very unofficial ‘The Bruno Movie‘ site.  Perhaps this has been subtly engineered by Universal as a back up back? I doubt it. A downside to this is that none of the below mentioned social media channels feature very highly SEO wise, but with so much hype surrounding the film this is of little consequence.

Perfect Character

What the marketeers at Universal have done though is create a huge social media presence around the Bruno film. A film that has a character at its centre is perhaps always going to benefit from social media. It is easier to create a Twitter account for Bruno than for Transformers (although they have a great social media campaign – just in a different way)

Myspace

This is basically the film’s website. The Bruno franchise has taken over a Myspace page with special dispensation to sit on a custom URL www.meinspace.com .

This page has the movie trailer, links to Facebook and Twitter, a ‘bio’ about Bruno and Myspace friends.

Twitter

Brunovassup Over 25,000 followers

Brun’s Twitter is a comedic set of tweets (depending on your sense of humour) written by Bruno. The updates are most probably ghost tweeted although they are uncannily similar to the characters on screen antics so maybe Sacha Baron Cohen does supply them? It is only updated roughly 1-2 times a week so perhaps Sacha finds the odd minute to update.

Facebook

Then there is of course the character’s Facebook page. This is done well with Facebook live stream, allowing fans to discuss the film using their Facebook status. They have a much used wall and photo gallery.

Buzz

Not only did Universal (or their agency) create the social media presence, they also created a buzz and awareness around the campaign. Facebook is a graveyard of pages with no fans so this is half the campaign battle. The offline activity must surely of helped and was more than likely carefully choreographed in to the promotion schedule. Bruno landing in Eminem’s lap at the MTV awards has seen 100 million views. Universal didn’t even need to set up a specific Youtube channel as this kind of publicity drives itself.

Overview

The best thing about this campaign is just that. It’s a campaign. Not a series of abstract and unconnected social profiles like so many corporate social campaigns end up being. There is a consistency through each of the Twitter, Facebook and Myspace profiles which ensures interaction with fans. The last status update on Bruno’s Facebook page for example had over 7300 ‘likes’ in 9 hours.The Facebook page has over 453,000 fans, Twitter 25,000 and Meinspace 136,000 fans.

Thats good interaction and what does interaction mean? Box office receipts!

Further reading:

Adage on Bruno saving Myspace
Nick Burcher
Happy Bruno.com