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Myspace finally makes a change and launches Myspace Radio

Back in June of this year, Myspace was sold to Specific Media to get Myspace off the NewsCorp financial books and also as a last ditch effort to breathe fresh air to a social network that had fallen to the perils of other platforms such as of Facebook and Twitter.

The alternative would have been to shut down Myspace for good, so for users there was a glimmer of hope after the sale that the new owners Specific Media could make positive changes to bring back people and make the site fun again.

As part of the sale, it was announced that Justin Timberlake would be a creative and strategic business partner (and investor) in the site. Specific Media was supposed to announce plans they had for the site back in the summer, however, as in typical Myspace fashion, it was postponed a couple of times. Things then seemed to fizzled out and more and more users continued to jump from the sinking ship.

Then in October at Advertising Week, Specific Media finally made their long awaited announcement on what plans they have for Myspace. The new owners decided as everyone already thought, they would spin Myspace Music off as their main product with JT leading the music helm and returning to Myspace’s roots of music and social.

So here we are now, six months later and Myspace has officially made their big reveal. What is it you ask? Well, it took Myspace six months and Specific Media $35 million to build (ie., update) their existing Music Player and turn it into the Myspace Radio music player. Yep, that’s it.

With Myspace Radio, you can now tune into your favorite artist’s music stations and listen to music by them, without having to manually select songs that you want to hear. So if you want to hear songs by Lil Wayne, just search for him and select, and Myspace Radio will take care of the rest. I have tried it and it’s nice, it works for the most part.

Myspace Radio as you imagine comes into a market that in recent months has been flooded with other “Radio” stations, services and channels. For example, we now have Spotify on Facebook, Google Music, can’t forget iTunes with Ping, Pandora and I Heart Radio to name a few. Of course Spotify, iTunes and Google Music are the big players in that mix, but with all the rest, there are already tons of options available to listen to music online and on mobile and to share with friends socially.

Is it too late for Myspace to enter (re-enter) the social music space? With their dwindling user base, tainted brand and competitors which before was only Facebook and Twitter and now includes Google Plus, Tumblr and even Path, it appears to be a long shot.

Suffice to say, the stats don’t look good. Myspace is down 30 million users from last year this time to now.



Taking a look at Myspace Radio, the concept is the same as the other radio/channel services out there. As I said, it works, but is a bit buggy. It’s still in Beta, so there more than likely are some kinks to work out.

I take it Myspace didn’t realize that Flash is six-feet under the ground, because apparently Myspace Radio is built using Flash. If you try to use it on an Apple device, forget about it, as you will get this message.



Myspace has a very tall order on it’s hands and I am afraid, as much as I used to love Myspace, it’s attempts to revive the network are beyond repair. Maybe something will come of the new Myspace Radio, but in Myspace’s current state, that glimmer of hope just continues to fade away.

Specific Media did tell Billboard that in 2012, there will be additional changes besides Myspace Radio to help relaunch the site. What those will be is still unknown, but I doubt users will be flocking back to Myspace anytime soon.