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MySpace Music's Australian launch gives fans access to a huge back catalog of music
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It’s been a big week for free, legal content as leading music service Spotify launches a download service (but not for Australian or US folk) and Foxtel Download was activated.
In the midst of this flurry of digital activity, MySpace quietly launched its music service. An unsuspecting Australian MySpace user might not have seen much change from the week before, however, dig a little deeper and you may see MySpace as a serious player in the streaming music business. Too bad the interface is a dog.
With the support of the major labels and many independent ones, MySpace Music gives a real depth of music that is hard to find online, especially by legal means. This depth of music is all available to stream free under an ad-supported model. In the US, which launched its music site in Sept 2008, MySpace Music has nearly tripled the number of unique users since launch.
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MySpace music is competing against fast rising services like Grooveshark.com
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MySpace, which has long been a home for artists, brings with it the rich meta-data including upcoming shows, news video and other features for fans. MySpace also has a long history of exclusives such as its ‘secret shows’. Big name acts, including Air, The Cure, Hilltop Hoods and Duffy have played secret shows in Australia with New Zealand playing host to acts such as Fall Out Boy and Evermore.
While the depth of music and meta-data is there, the presentation falls a little short when compared to many other music streaming services.
Whilst Australians are still currently locked out of Spotify , wannabe Grooveshark is showing very strong growth over the last year. Last.fm took a hit recently as Aussies were forced to cough up cash to play and Pandora has long been a no-go for Australians, bar some fancy proxy footwork.
However yet again MySpace seems a little confused in what it actually wants to be. Despite the unrivalled depth of music now available to Australians MySpace Music just doesn’t cut it if you want to use it as a replacement music player.
While there are many ways to access the music, the experience is far from seamless. The interface essentially restricts the user to a YouTube-style music experience. Click a link on the artist page and the music stops playing.
Fair enough, however, the pop-out player doesn’t let you add tracks while playing, resulting in a frustrating stop-start process. You can add and you will find that you can’t add tracks to the current playlist on the fly, at least not in a way that dynamically updates. In fact, I encountered quite a few problems adding songs to playlists, at some points throwing up an error suggesting I might be disconnected from the internet, as the pop-out player continued to happily stream music.
It would have been nice to see better integration with MySpace as a whole, integrating a music player with the instant messaging bar seems like a no-brainer which would allow seamless music and playlist management while browsing around MySpace.
Unfortunately as it stands MySpace is just a bit too clunky to be used as a primary music player. Despite having significantly more variety than most of its competitors, especially from notable Australian artists such as Grinspoon, MySpace Music falls tantalisingly short of being a fully functional music service.
For quickly searching and listening to specific tracks MySpace Music is a dream, but for those who want to build a custom playlist on the fly, it is a frustrating experience. With the service up and running for over a year in the US, it’s unlikely any major UI improvements are coming any time soon.
That’s a shame because MySpace Music has the potential to be the next killer app in the music space. Unfortunately the clunky user experience may prevent it taking off as upstarts like Grooveshark quickly gain market share and Spotify looms on the horizon.
