Monday, June 17, 2013

MySpace Tries It Again

We've been hearing about it ever since Justin Timberlake bought in 2011, but the new MySpace is now out of beta and open to the general public. The company has a significant marketing war chest, with $20 million for both digital and television campaigns to raise awareness. If its first commercial (see below) is any indication of what that campaign will be like, it's in for a rough ride.

MySpace now has a nice clean modern look and feel and is keeping its legacy as a music streaming and discovery site alive by keeping that at the forefront of the site, rather than social networking. This may or may not be a mistake, only time will tell, as it remains to be seen just who its users will be.

I personally think the company made a big mistake by not taking advantage of the last Timberlake release in March. Piggybacking on the huge marketing effort would have brought much more awareness than the $20 mil they're about to spend. It's hard to believe that Timberlake didn't insist upon it back then. Yes, the service wasn't ready yet, but the fact of the matter was that it was already in beta, so it wasn't like there wasn't anything to show. Opportunity lost.

It's a much larger music world now than the first time around in 2003 for MySpace. Even with its current 25 million or so users, it has a very uphill climb as a result.

Check out the first commercial.


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3 comments:

Rand Bliss said...

Despite a few bugs, it does at least have a nice new Facebook, er..facelift;-)

Example: myspace.com/randbliss

Tom said...

Maybe it's me, I'm not in the demographic, but even so I think that's a lousy commercial spot. Poor flow, no interest created.

Geoff said...

Do we really need another music distribution and/or streaming site? MySpace should have been doing what BandCamp are doing today, about 5 years ago.

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