MySpace Stops Startling Users With Bad Music

In one particular way, MySpace has long been a dangerous place to visit: when browsing profiles with your speakers on, you never know if you’ll deafen yourself (and/or your coworkers) with death metal, or worse yet, expose everyone to emo.  Fortunately, MySpace has now fixed the problem. 

Basically, the profile song autoplay feature’s been chucked.  Although people are still able to attach tunes to their profiles, and passers-by are still able to listen to them without jumping through hoops (signing in, promising a record label their soul, etc.), music won’t start blaring the moment any given page loads.

It seems likely that, except for some of the amateur musicians and bands who try to promote themselves through MySpace, most users will appreciate this gesture.

Then here’s the more tangible benefit of the development: Michael Arrington wrote, "Autoplays accounted for a billion or more song streams per month, and were costing MySpace a significant amount of money.  Turning off that hose is a cost saving maneuver."

All in all, it’s rather amazing that someone at MySpace didn’t think to disable the profile song autoplay feature years ago.