MySpace is in late stage negotiations to acquire music streaming service iMeem, so Techcrunch says. MySpace acquired that other music service iLike only three months ago. iMeem has financial troubles and has become an easy bird to shoot. If iMeem gets acquired by MySpace it’s pretty sure that the service will become paying as MySpace Music will soon be turning to subscriptions to manage costs.
Both music services iLike and Lala have seen a massive growth since they have been included in Google’s Music Onebox service. Muztec checked the traffic statistics as represented by Alexa and found that both services are now almost both as big with MySpace owned iLike slightly being the biggest (see the detail – iLike being in red with Lala being in blue). However it’s Lala who has seen a massive growth of almost 900% overnight. iLike ‘only’ doubled its traffic since what could be called a very succesful joined venture with Google.
It remains to be seen of course if this will also translate in similar sales via both music services. Check the stats for Lala versus those for iLike.
By
admin on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 (Google, Google Audio, Google Music, Google Music Onebox, Lala, MySpace, iLike)
A interesting news tidbit reached us from the colleagues at Techcrunch. According to their sources Google’s newly launched Music Onebox (which lets users stream songs in their entirety for free) will be offering songs from several famous acts that can only be found through Google search. And some of those exclusive tracks will be given away for free.
Still according to the tech blog, over 20 artists are involved. Seeing that U2 has been involved in almost every promotional material, it’s pretty sure that at least Bono and C° will be included in this promotional action to boost the new music search service.
Expect it to launch in the next days, in the US only that is for the moment!
According to allthingsd.com Microsoft’s MSN is in preliminary talks with MySpace about using the social networking site’s music service, MySpace Music, to help power music offerings on Microsoft’s portal. Not all that unlogical, MSN Music scores rather bad in terms of traffic, while MySpace Music is the only part of the former MySpace kingdom doing rather well. (Just to give you an idea, Comscore reported the following numbers for April: MySpace Music had 27.4 million unique monthly visitors while MSN Music had just 7.4 million monthly users.) Instead of reinventing the music wheel, Microsoft would prefer going hand in hand with News Corp.
It’s no coincidence that MySpace recently bought social music service iLike to expand its distribution all over the Web, including on (rivaling) social platforms but also via Google’s newest music search service. Next would be Microsoft’s MSN. MySpace is not a sinking ship after all… it would be without iLike though.
Google is partnering with at least 4 online music services for its Google Music service (in fact nothing more than an enhanced search). There will streaming songs from LaLa.com, song samples from iLike.com, and song purchasing options from Apple’s iTunes and from Amazon MP3. Muztec learned that a 5th partner would also join, namely iMeem. Revenue from the service will be split between the music servics and the record labels as Google views the system more as a way to retain users rather than a direct revenue source.
The service will launch next week, October 28th. Looking at the ease that how major record labels wanted to join the service (not that they wouldn’t as they are already working with the named services anyhow), you can bet on it that they have high hopes for it. It remains to be seen if this new service from Google will deliver the traffic boost needed to get the legal downloadtrain on the correct track as far as revenue is concerned. Also, will it convince torrent seekers to switch to paying for what they request for free?
Google Music will not launch an own application as some suggested but partner with iLike and LaLa for their new music service. The service – rather a partnership – will be announced on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. The new service will be integrated into Google search so Techcrunch says. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional linked information will be added around the music search result.
Good news for the labels, users will be offered the opportunity to purchase songs for download. Up until today iLike and LaLa provide just a limited streaming service whereas MySpace Music, who recently took over iLike, has full streaming rights from all four major labels plus a large number of indie labels.
