Myspace was recently in the news for its shift in positioning as a social network in India. In fact, today we have a concert happening here in Mumbai organized by them called MySpace secret shows that we had blogged a few days back. Now continuing in the same vein, it has launched a music portal called – Myspace Music Center.
According to MySpace, MUSIC CENTRAL- the biggest social Music portal in India for independent music genre. This new portal has been designed to be a one-stop shop for discovery of all kinds of Indian non-mainstream music – including Rock, Pop, Classical, Electronica, Sufi, Folk, Heavy Metal, Bhangra and so on. The way it sounds it seemed like a description apt for Last.fm actually to me.
They also seem to want to portray the site as a resource for fresh talent that record labels can tap into. Clearly the idea is to bait young independent musicians with getting a record contract and thereby create enough music and related content for people to use of which will increase the traffic and the engagement happenning thereof.
It features existing big names in independent (non film) Indian music scene and currently has MotherJane as its featured artist. Now before talking about the other features, I think it is imperative to say that this is not a new site in itself. The social music portal is actually a Myspace profile and looks and acts in a lot of ways like a MySpace profile. Some of the key features mentioned include:
- The ability to add songs to their profile with the click of a button.
- You Oughta Know segment will introduce hidden talent from across the country
- Stream and listen to music and share their most precious ‘music moments’ with fellow MySpacers through the “Upload Pics” option
Most of these features are currently not visible and there’s a reason to it. According to MySpace, all these “social” tools like sharable streaming music, exhaustive music event calendar, user uploaded concert pictures and more will be launched during today’s concert in Mumbai.
Essentially, this move by Myspace isn’t departing from the way it is in anyway. The idea is to create an apparent platform for Independent musicians to come and join and then persuade them to use MySpace the way it is. This is evident from this statement: “Finally, this mega music resource also shares tips and notes on how bands and artistes on the site can make the most out of their own MySpace experience. Profile creation is just the first step of gaining mileage; other options such as fan clubs, online music uploads at zero cost etc. make their MySpace profiles an indispensable tool in their pursuit of ‘making it big’. “
Nothing wrong with such a move really, it’s just that there isn’t anything fundamentally innovative in the system. On the other hand there is something new happenning on MySpace and it is targeted and well conceived as a strategy. I expect similar news to follow in the coming few months as well, and perhaps after a year we can analyse if these moves have paid off for them.
