MySpace is a social networking website created in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. In July 2005 it was bought for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Today MySpace has become one of the most popular websites in the world with more than 230 182 000 members in April 2008 and this number does not stop increasing. Many artists have perceived the power of this new digital interface and have seen in it a means to meet a public. MySpace is more than a simple website, it is also a powerful communication tool for most of self-produced musicians, a weapon of mass communication. MySpace creators understood the fantastic potential of their website and, confronted with the other networks such as Facebook, they decided to create a special version fully devote to musicians and music lovers, MyspaceMusic.
The impact of the Internet and the numeric revolution on music industry is considerable. They both give birth to new kinds of musical creations and they help artists who could not afford it to get to a professional level. Nowadays you are able to write, tape and produce a CD at home and distribute it by yourself from your computer. However this new way to success would not exist without free means of communication and promotion as MySpace. A musician needs to seduce a lot of people if he wants to be successful.
It allows everybody an equal chance to be heard. From superstars to unheard garage bands, everybody can have a page and anybody can become a friend of those artists and support them, thereby becoming part of their online network. And MySpace offers the same tools to everybody, big or small. That is why more and more musicians are heavily invested in MySpace. They can make new fans and communicate with them. They are able to post new music, photos, new tour dates and blog posts about whatever topics strikes them. Most of them don't even have proper websites, a MySpace page is enough. It is easy to create and maintain, no need for a webmaster. And anybody can make it for free. MySpace has become an irreplaceable institution for anybody wants to make a name for oneself.
MySpace takes an active part in the emergence of new means of music listening. It gives to the public a feeling of participation in music creation by reducing the gap between the artist and the music lover. As if the fan would have a real key role to play in the evolution of the band or the singer he loves. In a way MySpace set the public free by giving back to him the right to choose what he really wants to listen. Public becomes the only judge. Here is the revolution ! The site has raised the bottom and allowed bands to reach out to people in ways that didn't exist just a few years ago. It gives birth to very successful artists outside of promotion’s and production’s traditional ways. For example the famous rock band, The Artic Monkeys, has been discovered by a music label because of the website and they sold more than 360 000 copies of their first CD in only one week. In this way MySpace represents an opportunity for labels to find a gem, like an inexhaustible goldmine. Because of the CD crisis labels cannot risk betting on unknown bands anymore, so MySpace must become a solution for them since it is a good mean to test the success of a talented newcomer. This social network establishes a close relationship between the different participants involved in the music industry. MySpace proposes a new business model.
The example of MySpace shows the amazing power of the Internet. It emphasizes the importance of medias and their impact on society. Medias can change the world !
According to Amit Kapur, managing director of MySpace, “ today the interface has got about thirty versions and it counts more than 230 million members”. If MySpace was a country, it would be the fifth most populated state in the world.
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