MySpace no longer crying a river with 1 MILLION new punters

MySpace may have been dumped by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch but today its star investor - aged pop prince-turned-actor Justin Timberlake - has something to smile about: the site has gained 1 million users since December. The signups represent the first growth for the site since Specific Media bought it. Murdoch's company News …

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone validate these numbers?

Or is it just lame PR stunt to try and change everyone's opinion that MySpace is dead.

My feeling that is there are almost as many fairytales going on here, as there are Microsoft's unvalidated sales numbers is spews out on a regular basis (only to look fishy months down the line when official numbers make Microsoft's claims look total BS).

[Craig 12]

Comscore are independent of myspace, and report decent traffic? It was there in the article :)

I like the idea of myspace turning into something new, rather than run itself in to the ground. I read elsewhere myspace has 4x the amount of music spotify has. I thought myspace was dead as well, but I still see a lot of respectable musicians/DJs having myspace accounts- I guess this is why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Comescore != traffic.

New signups can only be claimed by the host themselves.

As anything Murdoch related, I would think it's safe to say it can't be trusted.

[mccp]

@ Mr Shitpeas - from the article:

"Murdoch's company News Corp acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580m and then ingloriously offloaded it in June 2011 at a $254m loss."

So how would this be Murdoch related then?

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: Can anyone validate these numbers?

Y'know, the first part of your comment got me thinking... could MySpace actually, eventually, be saved by people becoming fed up with Zuckerberg's sociopathic attitude towards privacy and leaving Farcebook? Just wondering.

I know MySpace had some privacy issues last time I looked, but I'd bet they pale in comparison to Facebook.

[ratfox]

In before...

The inevitable complaints from the RIAA.

[Mike Flugennock]

Re: In before...

Stop me if I'm wrong, but if the people reviving MySpace are mostly indie/unsigned bands or singer/songwriters performing original material using MySpace to promote and distribute their work, where exactly does the RIAA come in?

Not that I wouldn't put it past them to cook up a lame excuse, but, still...

[Code Monkey]

Who are these people?

I bet it's a million bots.

[Niall]

Er.. I'm one of those bots then. Tinfoil hat much? I sometimes listen to this in work, what exactly is wrong with free music!?

[Invidious Aardvark]

Free music? The RIAA lawyers/killbots have been dispatched - you are obviously a communist freetard who must be sued for every penny you own (and, if possible, a vast number of yet-to-be-earned pennies also) or killed to prevent you bringing the free world to its knees by not paying for music.

[Chris 171]

Figured it was due a comeback

Whilst Soundcloud has taken a lot of the more 'bedroom' producers away, I still see decent names names using MySpace & it seems a lot cleaner than in the past.

Best place for a skillful* musician to share their wares along with gigging info, back catalogues etc in my opinion.

*Skrillex not included

[Ben Holmes]

@Chris 171

WTF is a 'Skrillex', and how do you kill it?

[Lamont Cranston]

Good for them.

Leaving Google and Facebook to fight over the social networking crown, whilst carving out a useful niche for themselves.

[Mike Flugennock]

Stop me if I'm wrong, but...

...hadn't MySpace already become a repository for demo tapes by unsigned bands whose demos showed us all why they're unsigned?

No reinvention necessary, really.

[pear]

Well it's much cleaner now and a bit more purpose built, although personally even though I've been on there to listen to music/check out a band etc every so often I haven't logged in for about 5 years.

Facebook didn't pull of it's musician's pages very well at all so it's still a decent place for unsigned/small bands.

[Philip Lewis]

FAIL

I just typed in www.myspace.com

Up came a very ugly page, where everything was written in a language I cannot read.

This is a vast improvement on when I tried MySpace several years ago, when the site had the alarming chracteristic of displaying multiple languages simultaneously.

Google are equally guilty of the sin of FAILURE to understand that the country where the IP registration is indicative of the language of the user. MySpace fails for the same reason.

Google have the "Google in English", unfortunately if it is written in Thai I will have some problems reading it. MySpace seems to have something, but since it is all written in a language I cannot read, it is pretty fucking useless.

Google is particularly fucked up, because even if I am logged in to Google and stay logged in, google.com ignores the language that I have told them I speak, and merrily displays things in Japanese when I am in Tokyo atc. Google not only get it wrong, they know with certaintly that they got it wrong.

FAIL FAIL FAIL.

[heyrick]

@ Philip Lewis

I live in France and while some idiotic sites insist on speaking French, there are those that actually look at the preferred language sent out by my browser, which is "en-gb, en, fr, es". Why not set this on your browser and see if it makes any difference?

[Philip Lewis]

Re: @ Philip Lewis

They are set to english

google doesn't give a FF - check out the threads on Google to understand.

mySpace is probably just plain incompeteant and incapable of understanding

Most of the web is just too damned lazy to understand the issue and how to correctly resolve it.

In recent news, our customer website which is 100% in English and displays massive data pages, Google Chrome has got the idea that the web pages are in "Catalan" and requests if I want a translation. I blame Lionel Messi.

[Gil Grissum]

Amateurs

It's the amateurs overloading Myspace with their electro-techno-crap and that rap junk. Makes it difficult for real pro musicians to be heard. Myspace still sucks and their "radio station" doesn't really do much for any indie artist who's trying to get anywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amateurs?

Some people love the "electro-techno-crap and that (c)rap junk". Even so, it does not make their taste any less valid than yours.

Real 'Pro' musicians will carry on serving the their apprenticeships and becoming battle-hardened via the gigs they play - probably in a very similar way that your much derided electro people will - and as in any skill-set, the talented people will float to the top whilst the lest gifted amongst us will gravitate to our natural level.

Not liking something is not synonymous with it being crap. My Parents hated the rock music that I loved, and just because someone younger than you loves something that you don't like, it does not mean that it is rubbish.

Enjoy your Glen Miller. :))

[weenoid]

+1 for the Devin Townsend username reference.