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Sep 26 2008 9:06am EDT
MySpace Music: Not For Me
Kevin Maney writes: I can't imagine that anyone who has proclaimed MySpace Music to be the future of the industry has actually tried to use the site.
I've been trying to use it. I really have. I do believe that its business model is on the right track. Buying individual songs makes no sense. Unlimited streamed music is where things are heading -- either by subscription, or free with ads.
But then there's execution, and MySpace Music looks as if a tornado picked up a bunch of different music sites, swirled them all together, and then dropped them somewhere in Missouri. To hear an artist, you search, and then get routed to what amounts to that artist's MySpace page, where you never know what you'll find. Prince is supposed to have just about his whole catalog there, but last I tried the Prince area was pronounced "closed." I tried Harry Nilsson: just four songs there. New artist The Bird and The Bee? Four songs.
The site is set up to let you find one song and listen to it, then find another and so on. You navigate off the page you're on, the song stops playing. There doesn't seem to be a way to quickly build a playlist and just turn it on and listen.
Bottom line: Compared to Rhapsody -- which is much closer to my idea of an unlimited music site -- MySpace Music at this point comes off as some rag-tag wannabe. No doubt it will be popular with the millions already deeply into MySpace. But I can't imagine it will lure new users.
If you want some other opinions, here's a pretty good round-up of reviews. Guess we'll see if MySpace can improve on what it's thrown out there so far.
