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Myspace making a comeback

The former leading social network site Myspace announced in Monday that it’s getting a resurgence in popularity due to their introduction of a new online music player.

Over a million new users have registered at myspace.com in the previous month, averaging 40,000 accounts activated daily. Its new owners attribute this positive response mainly to Myspace’s integration with Twitter and Facebook.

The ousted social network star has transformed into an online community for music enthusiasts and appears to be growing into a platform that is ready to co-exist with Twitter and Facebook.

Instead of competing with Facebook, it is now going head to head with online music services like Rdio, Jango, Pandora and Spotify. Myspace is now claiming they have the biggest catalog of tracks online with 42 million songs.

MySpace was purchased by News Corp for USD 580 million in July 2005. But according to Rupert Murdoch himself, the chief executive of News Corp, their purchase has been a big mistake and that it was mismanaged in every way possible.

So it was not at all surprising for them to sell it in June 2011 to Specific Media for only USD 35 million, a mere 6% of their original valuation.

The new owners, Chris and Tim Vanderhook, along with artist Justin Timberlake invested and reinvented Myspace. They managed to shift the site’s focus from social networking into an entertainment portal.

Since its launch of the new music player 2 months ago, there has been an increase in registrations and a significant rise in the amount of site traffic.

Myspace appears to have a number of assets in its possession including a huge song library, large traffic and brand recognition that if the firm can sustain its new-found upward trend, the new owners may certainly have gotten a bargain.

This new MySpace player boasts of unlimited and free music streaming from unsigned and established artists. They also offer customized radio mode and an easy integration with Facebook.

It’s yet to prove that this resurgence is not only an isolated case. But with Spotify, a competitor, starting to limit the quantity of songs that free account holders can play, it might just be possible that MySpace can fill the void for an online music player that provides similar service for free.