MySpace Music Launches In The UK

MySpace is continuing to make big strides on the music front.  Or more accurately, the social network has made a huge, across-the-Atlantic leap, as late yesterday, MySpace Music launched in the UK.

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."

MySpace Music

MySpace Today Trailers | MySpace Video

All in all, it's something for people on every side of the equation to get excited about.

Artists including Alicia Keys, 50 Cent, Florence & the Machine, Kasabian, and Nelly Furtado are providing videos and playlists.  Other interesting entities, including the Vatican and Katie Price, have also contributed.  This, in turn, should give users a lot of fun stuff to play with.  (Side note: the Vatican has great taste, endorsing both Muse and Mozart.)

And this an important moment for MySpace, too, of course.  Launching a product in a new market isn't something that's done lightly, and since MySpace did so where Facebook is especially dominant (Hitwise estimated that Facebook received one-seventh of all UK page views in September), a lot may be riding on MySpace Music.

Have You Read This?

> MySpace Reaches Deal With Another Music Label

> MySpace Picks Up Imeem

> MySpace Launches New Music Charts

MySpace Reaches Deal With Another Music Label

The "virtual fifth label" is now friends with MySpace.  Merlin, an organization that represents independent music companies, is supposed to have signed a deal with the social network that should nicely complement MySpace's existing partnerships with EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner. 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.

MySpace May Acquire iLike For $20M

MySpace has been doing rather well on the music front in recent days; this month, it's debuted a Heath Ledger-directed music video and some Pearl Jam songs.  The site may soon chalk up another win, too, as one report indicates it's about to make a significant acquisition.

Michael Arrington writes, "MySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike, we've confirmed with multiple sources.  The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace's first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009.  The price is 'around $20 million.'"

Since iLike has raised $16.5 million in funding since getting started in 2006, that sounds like quite a bargain.  What's more, iLike has ties to Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut, and claims to have over 50 million registered users, so MySpace might be getting a lot of "ins."

As for what sort of people are involved, the founder of MTV, a Clear Channel SVP, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla are members of iLike's advisory board, so MySpace seems to be receiving an implicit nod from some pretty important folks.

We'll be sure to provide additional details as they become available.