Specific Media-owned Myspace has rolled out a Myspace music player with features such as built-in search, music recommendations and integration with one-time arch social network rival Facebook. The new player boasts over 40 million tracks, with 30 million exclusives from unsigned artists. Listeners will be able to use the advertising-supported service for free.

According to comScore metrics, Myspace has just 25 million users, down from a peak of 76 million in December 2008. In the UK, the website recently fell out of the market’s top 10 social network’s ranking for the first time.

“Myspace traffic has been on the decline for at least three years now but this is the first time the social network has fallen out of the Experian Hitwise top 10,” explains James Murray from Experian Hitwise.

“In its place, Stumble Upon has risen in the rankings and is now the UK’s tenth most popular social network. As the social media landscape continues to evolve, brands need to be aware of the fast moving trends and which social sites people are visiting.”

MySpace is planning a large-scale revamp next year, and will be adding video to the mix – the company aims to entice brands with this content. MySpace told Billboard it wants advertisers to back exclusive video, such as behind-the-scenes footage.

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Months after it was purchased by online ad firm Specific Media at a fire sale price, MySpace is finally getting a makeover.  The focus, as the new owners promised, is on music and includes full Facebook integration, a final admission that MySpace is no longer the social network it was created to be.

Rolling out today, the changes, first reported by Billboard, also include a revamped music player with music recommendation and music search built in. "Music is white-hot right now and we want to be able to capitalize on our music catalog and our history in music. It's something the previous management didn't really highlight,"MySpace chief operating officer Chris Vanderhook told Billboard.

Vanderhook's hope is to use the deals that MySpace has with labels along with an exclusive catalog of millions of tracks from independent artists to reposition the site as a music destination.  Many artists, however, stopped updating their MySpace pages months ago, and their is no guarantee they or their fans will return.

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Irvine-based digital media agency Specific Media LLC launched Myspace Music Player, a new feature that lets users listen to songs for free via its recently acquired Myspace social networking website. Myspace Music Player is the first significant bid to bolster Myspace and boost its traffic since Specific Media’s announced a deal to acquire Beverly Hills-based Myspace LLC in June.

Myspace Music Player is an online library that holds 42 million songs. Users get free access and do not have to listen to advertisements. The company has not set any limits on use. The new feature also is tied in with Facebook. Users of Myspace Music Player can share selections with Facebook friends.

Myspace inked licensing agreements with Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner in addition to deals with thousands of independent record labels to amass the music library's inventory. Specific acquired Myspace from New York-based News Corp. for $35 million.

News Corp. had paid $580 million for Myspace during the site's peak in 2005. Myspace soon saw users leave for Facebook and other social networking sites. Specific has made few announcements on the site's progress since the acquisition.

A media event outlining the company's plans for Myspace was originally planned for the summer, but never occurred. Specific executives did participate in an advertising conference in the fall where they provided some details about changes to the site and advertising opportunities to a select group of marketers.

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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Dec. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Myspace (www.myspace.com), a leading social entertainment destination that lets artists and fans share and discover content, today announced the release of its new Myspace Music Player, which empowers people to access the world's largest catalog of music online. 

The new player is the first to provide free unlimited on-demand listening, lean-back personalized radio mode, improved search functionality, as well as instant sync capabilities that allows people to share the music they've listened to on Myspace with their friends on Facebook. The player's advanced features reflect Myspace's DNA: promoting and enabling music sharing and discovery. Through unique licensing agreements with Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner (aka The Big Four record labels) and partnerships with 20,000 independent labels, Myspace has unrivaled global rights to more than 42 million songs, boasting a library that is three-times the size of other online catalogs.   "Myspace has unmatched access to signed and unsigned artists who need a platform to get their music out. The new player is our commitment to fostering the artist-fan connection—not only allowing people to play their favorite songs, but also offering suggestions to unearth new favorites," said Chris Vanderhook, COO of Myspace.

"Through the Facebook integration, we're extending the discovery process across networks, allowing music fans to circulate their playlists and recommend top picks to all their friends."The new Myspace Music Player allows users to do the following: On-Demand Listening lets people listen to individual songs, full albums and playlists for free, on demand without interruption of audio advertisements and with no caps on streaming or skips. Facebook Integration allows people to listen and share their music selections instantly with friends via Myspace and Facebook's news feed, ticker and timeline.  Myspace automatically creates a profile for new users so there is no time wasted setting up an account.  Radio Mode is a lean-back listening experience that recommends tracks for people based on their music listening history.

The player functionality also allows listeners to add songs to their existing playlists based on newly-discovered favorites that they heard first through the Myspace recommendations made in Radio Mode.  Additionally, through Radio Mode, people can discover all 15 million artists on Myspace – major, independent, signed or unsigned – and visit an artist's radio station at the link: myspace.com/artistname/radio. Discover new music with improved search options such as Discovery/Browse, Top Charts, Similar Songs and Editor's Picks. Myspace beta testing reveals that the recent player enhancements have driven consumer engagement beyond the one-hour mark to over 20 songs and resulted in a 10% lift in the average number of music streams per person.

The Myspace music player is available both online and on mobile devices, allowing people to access their favorite music anytime, anywhere without advertisement interruptions and subscription fees. The newly released player is the biggest development to Myspace since the company's acquisition by Specific Media in June 2011.ABOUT MYSPACE:Myspace, LLC. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love.

These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events. Myspace is also the home of Myspace Music, which offers an ever-growing catalog of freely streamable audio and video content to users and provides major, independent, and unsigned artists alike with the tools to reach new audiences. The company is headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA and is a subsidiary of Specific Media.ABOUT SPECIFIC MEDIA:Specific Media is a digital media company driving viewership for content owners, engagement for brands and relevance for consumers. With capabilities spanning original programming, cross-channel distribution and addressable advertising, the company connects audiences, content and brands, adding meaning to each touch-point.

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After teasing a few key advertisers with a short presentation in September, MySpace has debuted its first major product offering under new owners Specific Media. The new MySpace music player launches today with enhanced music recommendations and built-in search engines to increase time spent with the player, as well as a Facebook integration that should mark the official end of MySpace's attempts to compete for the social-networking crown.

"This is a natural partnership," MySpace chief operating officer Chris Vanderhook tells Billboard.biz. "Because of the users they have and the integrations with Spotify, Mog and Rdio it makes sense to open up our catalog to their users."

And the size of MySpace's catalog is what Specific's looking to tout the most. With over 42 million songs total, MySpace has exclusive access to 30 million songs from independent, unsigned artists, which still make up the bread and butter of MySpace's user base.

That audience, however, has been cut by more than half from November 2010 to November 2011, with unique monthly users dropping from 54.3 million to 24.9 million during that time period, according to ComScore. But MySpace is looking to re-establish itself as a leading music site rather than the social-networking destination News Corp. tried and failed to make it for over five years.

 "Music is white-hot right now and we want to be able to capitalize on our music catalog and our history in music. It's something the previous management didn't really highlight," Vanderhook says.

The music player is ad-supported and free to users, with no audio ads airing mid-stream a la Pandora. That consumer-friendly offering plus a much easier-to-use search function are what Vanderhook believes are MySpace's top two killer apps this time around, based on audience research. "What we started to see in data was that the average user only knows four to five song-and-artists combos. Ask someone to name more than five songs and artists and most people can't. Most people didn't know what else to type in so then they would leave. It was clunky having to search for an artist."

But the music player is still just a first step in what Vanderhook promises will be a much bigger, full-scale relaunch slated for some time in the first half of 2012. "The great part about [MySpace CEO] Tim [Vanderhook] and I is we own the company, we don't answer to anybody. We're gonna build great product and we're gonna put it out when it's ready. I think under previous leadership they put out a timeline and put out whatever product they had. We haven't said, 'This has to be out by this date.'"

As for the advertisers MySpace began pitching in earnest this September, Vanderhook says the site will be focusing on creating and customizing premium video for their ad partners as part of its new MySpace Entertainment division helmed by former Fox branded entertainment exec Roger Mincheff. "If you're watching a video for Alicia Keys, for example, and there's a marketer who wants to be attached to Alicia Keys they probably also want to be a part of that video content," Vanderhook says. "So if you're watching that Alicia Keys video, it makes sense for me to recommend that you might be interested to watch that video and the behind-the-scenes of Alicia Keys as brought to you by a brand."

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MySpace is no longer one of the ten most popular social networking websites in the UK. According to a list compiled by Exprerian Hitwise, the ailing social network has dropped from the top ten list of social networking websites in the UK.

The company said MySpace, which has seen its ranking declining for the past few years has been replaced by StumbleUpon, which lets users discover new cool websites. "MySpace traffic has been on the decline for at least three years now, but this is the first time the social network has fallen out of the Experian Hitwise top 10," said James Murray from Hitwise. "In its place, StumbleUpon has risen in the rankings and is now the UK's tenth most popular social network," Murray explained to TechRadar.

The top most visited social network in the UK is Facebook, followed by YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo Answers and Gumtree, which make up the top five. LinkedIn, which touts itself as a professional social network, is lagging behind in sixth place followed by Tumblr, Moneysavingexpert, Moshi Monster and StumbleUpon at seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth spots respectively.

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Discovery engine Stumble Upon leapfrogged MySpace to claim tenth place based on web traffic data from November, pushing MySpace down to eleventh. All the other top ten sites in the category maintained their positions from October but YouTube  increased its market share of visits by 0.67%.

Twitter, Gumtree and LinkedIn lost market share compared to October, while Facebook continued to grow, now accounting for 53% of all visits to social networks. Experian Hitwise market research analyst James Murray said: "MySpace traffic has been on the decline for at least three years now but this is the first time the social network has fallen out of the  top ten."

He added: "As the social media landscape continues to evolve, brands need to be aware of the fast moving trends and which social sites people are visiting."In the search catergory, Google sites continued to dominate the market in November with a 0.05% increase in UK internet searches.

Google now accounts for 91.07% of all UK searches, with Microsoft sites in second place with 3.84% of searches and Yahoo! sites in third with 2.81% of the market. Murray said: "Google is not only the biggest search engine in the UK but it is also the fastest growing search engine of November."

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This is barely news, more of a high-powered executive waxing speculative rhetoric over broad topics, but here we go. Tim Schaaff, president oftheSony Entertainment Network said the following about Spotify.

“Spotify has been one of the first companies to be able to really make a statement about subscription services that has made sense to consumer, but it’s early days, we used to think that Myspace was going to dominate everything in social networking and they’re gone.They’re gone.”

This is true of course, Spotify is ascending right alongside thousands of competitors, but it seems a little fatalistic to compare its potential downfall to the dingy catacombs that is circa-2011 Myspace to be a little rash. The Spotify business model is just far more sustainable than social media ever was/is.

He continues by saying “it’s certainly not in the label’s interest to have one company like Spotify dominate everything, that’s not likely to happen, that doesn’t happen in general.” But of course, then you think about the iTunes music store.

It’s incredibly probable that Schaaff is sowing seeds for Sony’s Music Unlimited, one of the seemingly hundreds of horses in the cloud-serviced music-streaming race. It’s a brave new world for the music industry, and honestly, having a huge number of rival streamers to choose from isn’t exactly doing the consumer a lot of favors right now.

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Young Jeezy may be one of the biggest rappers around but most of us don’t know all that much about his personal life. Sure we know that he was a member of the group Boyz In The Hood and has appeared on hit singles like Akon’s “I’m So Paid,” Rihanna’s “Hard” and Usher’s “Love In The Club,” but the only clues we’ve had to Jeezy’s personality has come from his own lyrics.

That’s all about to change with the release of the new documentary A Hustlerz Ambition. Sharing its name with the Jeezy album Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition which drops next month, the film—which features cameos from Rihanna, Jay-Z, T.I., Drake as well as friends and family—tells the story of Jeezy’s early days as a youth in Hawkinsville, Georgia, and the emotional struggles he endured to make it to where he is today. Oh and did we mention that the whole thing is also narrated by Samuel L. Jackson?
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Last night Myspace attended the premiere of the film at Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York City, which was introduced by Young Jeezy himself. “I wanted to give you my life in the best way I could so I gave you this movie y’all,” Jeezy said to introduce the film which begins at a show in London where he was supporting Rihanna and goes on to show how far he’s come since coming up on the streets.
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However despite the fact that Jeezy is now a superstar the one thing that comes across more than anything in the film is the fact that no matter how far Jeezy would rose he never lost his connection to the streets and weather he was recording his first mix tapes or starting a charity to benefit the kids in his neighborhood, Jeezy has always remained committed to staying accessible to his friends and family… and even strangers, which was evidenced by the fact Jeezy stuck around to take photos with fans after the packed event.
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“I didn’t want what everyone else did and what worked for them,” Jeezy says of his relentless work ethic at one point during A Hustlerz Ambition, “I’m doing it the Jeezy way.” This film is ultimately a celebration of that statement and it’s one worth seeing.

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Maury often contains couples arguing over who the real father of a baby is, and naming and shaming many philandering 'babydaddys', like any great daytime talk show should. However, a recent episode takes accusations to a whole new level. Alleged father Joe removes himself from the situation, as he has a grand theory. He reckons the real father of his girlfriend's baby is really Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson.

Clearly not realising that all Myspace users will be automatically given Tom's profile as their first 'friend', Joe thinks Anderson is the father due to the baby's skin colour, and the fact that Tom is her first and only white friend on the social networking site.

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