Justin Timberlake Myspace at CESJustin Timberlake announces MySpace TV at CES

Will MySpace really be able to make a comeback as a major player in the social media/social music arena? For most of us Facebook users, MySpace is something that we used to use and haven’t thought about in years. Now with a new focus on entertainment and specifically music, MySpace is growing their user base by a reported forty thousand users per day! MySpace has added over a million users in the past month, and it appears to be due to the new streaming music player.

MySpace’s streaming audio player functionality, is in direct competition with other social music players like Spotify, but has a massive advantage with 42 million tracks, compared to just 15 million that Spotify offers. How many of these tracks are independent releases in some form is hard to know.

MySpace also features the ability to set personalized radio stations and get music recommendations from friends, both functions similar to Pandora and Spotify.

MySpace appears to have made a strong move by choosing to integrate with Facebook and Twitter, rather than compete against them, but some doubt that MySpace can come back from the obscurity of the last few years.

Ruport Murdoch sold MySpace in 2011 to the current owners (an investment group including Justin Timberlake) for 35 million dollars, after purchasing it for 580 million in 2005. At the time MySpace was still a leader in what was a rather new concept in social media.

The large base of artists and bands that have been participating in MySpace for the last few years have helped keep it alive and shaped the direction the company is taking today. The shift to a social music player could be exactly what MySpace needs to thrive in the social-music space.

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