This week saw the launch of Myspace Music, described as being a new, separate entity with the potential and opportunity to be as innovative as it would like to be. It has the backing of the big music labels and is selling music via Amazon; it’s not going to fail any time soon, I don’t think.
Unfortunately though, it’s only fully available in the US and there are complaints from smaller labels, and independents, that they’re not being given the same chance for exposure as the big four. Both of these things are a pretty big deal, for me at least, but neither are beyond solving. Pandora has never been any good for people in the UK, but as far as I’m aware, Last.fm manages to let people everywhere listen to the music, so it’s hopefully just a matter of time. Similarly, Last.fm makes it really easy for anyone to upload their own music to it, claim ownership and the (generally miniscule) royalties that follow. Last.fm then, surely, has to be something for Myspace to aim for if they don’t want to be an also-ran.
A few weeks ago, Waxy.org had an interview with Ethan Diamond regarding Bandcamp, a site that aims to make it really easy for bands to create good looking websites that let people listen to, and buy, their music. Like the new Myspace (music is all I’ve ever used Myspace for so, for me, this is as good as a replacement) it takes the approach of making entire albums streamable. This is a pretty big improvement over Last.fm or the old Myspace, where generally only a handful of tracks are made available. Bandcamp seems to be aiming very much at indie-label bands though, the kind of groups who have albums available but who rely on word of mouth and reccomendations rather than radio-play and labels’ advertising budgets to get themselves heard.
Then, yesterday (I think, that’s when I saw it) Muxtape filled their homepage with the chronicle of their attempts to get licensing with the labels sorted out. It’s worth a read, it’s not a particularly happy ending but the new plan is to re-launch Muxtape as a platform for bands to make it easy for them to have a web-presence, without the need for a developer. This is sounding familiar.
Is this the new big thing then? It’s exciting in a way to see what the different approaches will result in (if nothing else Bandcamp has shown that visualisations can work on the web, and don’t have to be boring) but at the same time, without the kind of aggregation that makes Last.fm (and Hype-Machine) so useful for the times when I want to find new things, being less specific in what I want to listen to, I don’t see myself being a frequent user. The people who actually seem to Get It don’t seem to be able to get the people who matter (the labels) onside, which is a real shame.
