MySpace, the once dominant social networking site that faded as Facebook grew to dominate, added one million new users over the past month. The site now has an average of 40,000 new registrations daily since launching its new MySpace Music Player back in December.
Facebook became a social networking giant due to Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts in 2009, while MySpace plunged in popularity. By March of 2011, MySpace lost 10 million users in a single month, according to BBC.
In June, a team of investors including company CEO Tim Vanderhook and the pop star Justin Timberlake bought MySpace for $35 million. They purchased the social network from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which had bought it for $580 million in 2005.
The new owners have stopped trying to compete with Facebook and other social networking sites. Instead, they are focusing on MySpace’s superior platform for posting and listening to music. The team’s strategy of revamping the site as a music service seems to be breathing at least some new life into MySpace.
"MySpace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love," Vanderhook said in a statement.
In addition to an expansive catalog of songs, the MySpace new music player offers unlimited, on-demand listening to a range of both mainstream and unsigned artists, personalized radio streams, recommendation feature and Facebook integration.
"The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for MySpace," Vanderhook added. "And the one million-plus new user accounts we've seen in the last 30 days validates our approach."
Specific Media credited the site's new music player, with access to more than 42 million songs, as offering the Web's biggest collection of free music. Digital music service Spotify, which launched in the U.S. in July, was only powering 15 million songs at that time.
Still, it remains to be seen whether the revival of MySpace will continue. But with Spotify beginning to limit the number of songs users with free accounts can play, there could be space opening up for a new online music player that offers similar content for free.
Edited by
Jamie Epstein
