To start with the Google side of things: Peter Kafka wrote earlier today, “Google’s negotiations with the big music labels are ‘broken,’ says a source familiar with the search giant’s thinking: ‘There’s definitely a problem with the Google music conversations.’  Another industry source says Google’s top executives are reconsidering their music plans altogether.  ‘They’ve gone backwards . . .’”

That’s less than encouraging for anyone who hoped to see Google start competing with Amazon and iTunes.  And at the same time, it’s plausible, given that Google Music rumors date back to at least 2006 and it managed to launch a music service in China in the meantime.

As for what happened at MySpace, Liz Gannes reported, “Myspace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro, who joined the company less than a year ago, has left to found a new start-up.”  And that’s similarly discouraging, since MySpace Music has been one of the few bright spots at MySpace in quite some time.

Of course, this shouldn’t mark the end of the line for either venture.  Google can always send in a new negotiator or offer more cash, and MySpace has perhaps gotten used to replacing various execs.

The timing’s just especially unfortunate on Google’s side since the company’s already dealing with a bad reaction to its first quarter earnings report.

Peter Kafka reported this afternoon, "Myspace Music head Courtney Holt is stepping down. . . .  Sources say Holt doesn’t have another post lined up.  But the real news is that he was still at the site, which is a joint venture between Myspace and the major music labels."

Consider that MySpace’s traffic levels have been falling sharply for at least the past year.  That’s not the sort of pattern many execs associated with their name.

Also, remember that different people at both News Corp. and MySpace have been pretty open about the possibility of a merger, spinoff, or sale due to losses.  Again, not something to brag about during a job interview.

Holt may have plenty of career options, though.  Kafka speculated that he might land elsewhere within News Corp., or at Spotify.   Or even at Apple or Google.

Meanwhile, MySpace CEO Mike Jones is supposed to take over MySpace Music in Holt’s absence.

An official statement on the matter explained, "Songtrust is the first online rights management solution that empowers all songwriters to take control of their music publishing and related rights.  By streamlining the complex process of registering song copyrights, collecting royalties, and maximizing licensing opportunities, Songtrust empowers independent songwriters to track how and where their songs are being used around the world."

Songtrust isn’t some dinky tool exclusively employed by garage bands, either.  The organization, which was just established in October of last year by Downtown Music, already boasts ties to the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), BMI, and SESAC (originally the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers).

So Courtney Holt, the president of Myspace Music, said, "We’re very excited to deepen our relationship with Downtown Music and to promote this new, innovative service that helps songwriters take control of their music publishing."

Unfortunately, no financial details were shared, making it hard to say what level of effort/investment this represents.  The move might just be intended to sweeten the pot prior to a sale of MySpace, or perhaps it’s supposed to have a major effect.

In any event, MySpace Music intends to promote Songtrust to all of the site’s musicians.

"Not unless it figures out a better way to keep visitors at the site," according to Padaget. "A non-user’s typical visit might begin and end at one artist’s page. When you’re done with the band, you’re done with the site."

The solution: "MySpace needs to guide users to similar artists, perhaps artists recommended by the band itself. There are too many obscure artists for a computerized system like Pandora to be effective, but personal tips from a favorite band, linked to the respective artist pages, might add an idiosyncratic twist."

"The page structure is there; MySpace Music just needs to connect the dots."  Unfortunately for MySpace Music, there are a whole lot of dots to connect.

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The end result isn’t too different from what fans of Yahoo Music or Pandora – or even regular radio listeners – are already used to.  MySpace members just have to tolerate a short ad, and then they’re free to continue on their figurative way, listening to a number of songs before getting stuck with another commercial.

That number of songs is quite large, too, with MySpace allowing people to progress through a playlist of 100 tunes between ads.  So even if MySpace becomes less generous in the future (and it probably will), the social network should have plenty of wiggle room before people begin to grow resentful.

A MySpace representative confirmed to David Kaplan, "We’re testing some new ad products and the response from our users has been positive."

The representative then encouraged more folks to weigh in, continuing, "As always, we’re interested in hearing feedback from our community and the advertising community as we roll out new functionality that creates the right balance between user experience and commerce."

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The MySpace Music team is working around the clock to duplicate your imeem playlists and make them available to you on myspacemusic.com as soon as possible. In the coming weeks, we will be emailing you with instructions on how to claim your playlists on MySpace Music, using your MySpace login. If you don’t have a MySpace account you can sign up for one here.

If you have questions about MySpace, please visit http://faq.myspace.com/app/home.

(Via HypeBot)

Original Article: MySpace announced today that it has completed a deal to acquire "certain assets" of the popular social media music service imeem. imeem is now redirecting to MySpace Music.

"MySpace Music and imeem share a common vision and commitment to further enabling the socialization of content across the Web," says MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta. "This deal will allow us to leverage imeem’s industry leading technology and over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience."

"Since its inception in 2003, imeem has built a highly engaged music community of more than 16 million users worldwide," says Van Natta. "imeem helped pioneer the ad-supported digital music model and created the Web’s first embeddable music and video playlists enabling users to embed songs and playlists virtually anywhere on the Web, including MySpace."

MySpace will be taking on imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell, CTO Brian Berg, COO Ali Aydar and VP of Sales David Wade as consultants to help manage the transition. Financial terms were not made available in the announcement. Mike Arrington says it’s less than $1 million.

MySpace says that in the coming weeks, they will be working as quickly as possible to take aspects of imeem and migrate them to MySpace Music. The company says they’ll be working to offer users the imeem playlists they created.
 

Related Articles:

> MySpace Music Launches In The UK

> MySpace Reaches Deal With Another Music Label

> MySpace Launches New Music Charts

A MySpace representative explained in an email to WebProNews, "With this launch, MySpace Music brings to the UK all of the functionality currently available to U.S., Australian and Kiwi based users including an ever-growing catalogue of fully licensed audio and video content from both Major and Indie artists, user-friendly e-commerce solutions, personal music players and user and artist playlisting, in addition to monetization opportunities and access to comprehensive analytics and charts tools for all artists."

Merlin’s association with indie artists and late arrival to the music scene (it launched in January of 2007) set it apart from the so-called Big Four.  Just the same, Merlin’s a major force, with members in more than 25 countries, and names like Cat Power, Tom Waits, and The White Stripes linked with it.

So it’s quite noteworthy that, according to Andrew Orlowski, a Merlin spokesman stated, "After more than a year of negotiations, MySpace Music has finally offered Merlin a deal that is acceptable to its members, members who represent 10% of the global music market."

What’s more, "The same eligibility and level of participation will be offered to all independent labels licensing content to MySpace Music."

Of course, the details of the arrangement haven’t yet been made public, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  But it looks like MySpace, which acquired Imeem just yesterday and launched MySpace Music Charts the day before, is really on a roll on the music front.

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> MySpace Picks Up Imeem

> MySpace Launches New Music Charts

> MySpace’s "New Moon" Webcast Brings In 3m Viewers

"When it comes to users, our commitment to "interestingness’ will drive engagement," says MySpace Music President Courtney Holt. "Our audience cares about two things- what’s bubbling up and what’s hot right now- and our editorial teams are focused on actively surfacing the most interesting and relevant artists, music and content to satisfy their needs. We also understand that the interests of our users change based on trends which is why the pulse of this charts system is the new "Movers" section, offering users and artists alike an immediate "in the moment" view at who and what is trending up in music across our network.

MySpace’s Music Charts include:

- Artist, Song, Album, and Video Charts across all music genres.

- Unique charts for all territories.

- The ability for users to friend and connect with artists they discover in the charts

- A new "Movers" section that highlights fastest rising artists and content across the network.

- Artist contributed content which enables MySpace Music to feature the best content from all artists, both small and large.

- The ability for users to engage directly with the Chart content. Songs, albums, videos are available for free to stream for users in all territories.

- An updated look and feel with clean navigation.

A quick browse though MySpace’s charts tells me they have a lot of work to do in this "beta" version. Perhaps the work really lies within the classification of artists by label. I’m not a big fan of labeling music, but there are clearly issues when Staind is in the hardcore section, or when Seether is in both the indie and major sections under the metal category.
 

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> MySpace Music Goes Down Under

> MySpace Music Adds To Executive Team

> MySpace Music Makes Some Deals to Bolster Catalog

The launch brings a new e-commerce partnership to MySpace Music with iTunes providing the music downloads locally, a MySpace spokesperson tells WebProNews. She also shares the following stats for the US version of MySpace Music:

Source: Nielsen Netview / August 2009

- MySpace Music unique users have grown 169% since launch in September 2008 and 1472%, year-over-year

- MySpace Music has nearly tripled its unique users since launch

- People ages 12 and 17 are 2.3 times more likely than the average active internet user to visit MySpace Music

- People ages 18-24 are 2.2 times more likely than the average internet user to visit MySpace Music

Source: comScore Media Metrix / August 2009

- MySpace Music is the #1 site in time spent for the 18-34 demographic

- MySpace Music is #2 in total unique users

- MySpace Music has 18.95 million monthly unique users

"MySpace Music brings to Australia and New Zealand all of the functionality currently available to U.S. based users including an ever-growing catalogue of fully licensed major and indie artist audio tracks, user-friendly e-commerce solutions, personal music players and user and artist playlisting, in addition to creating monetization opportunities for all artists," the spokesperson says.

"Both Australia and New Zealand have always been rabid music markets for MySpace Ever since Jet launched our Secret Shows program in August 2006 we’ve seen our fans share their favorite playlists, take advantage of advance listening sessions and help up-and-coming local artists build a following both locally and globally via MySpace," says Rebekah Horne, Managing Director and SVP of International at MySpace. "In Australia alone, we have had exclusive album premieres from Cut Copy, Silverchair, The Presets and Guns n Roses and hosted 40 free and intimate Secret Shows with some of the greatest acts in the world, including Air, The Cure, Hilltop Hoods and Duffy. New Zealand too has had its share of some great Secret Shows with the likes of Fall Out Boy and Evermore."

The site launches with Toyota and KFC as its flagship sponsors. Users can purchase and download single songs and full albums through iTunes.