Myspace has launched it’s advertising-supported music platform, allowing for users to stream millions of songs for free, thanks to the new structure drawing revenue entirely from advertising. This new development also allows for artists to sell their music through an Amazon.com-supported online store. Myspace’s co-founder Chris DeWolfe said;

“You’ll be able to see the top songs your friends are listening to. Eventually you’ll be able to buy tickets and merchandise and ringtones. When you look at things like iLike and Facebook, they don’t have the full songs, in most cases, and they don’t have official artist pages. People aren’t interested in music on Facebook in the way they are on MySpace, That’s one of the big keys here.”

It’s an interesting and ambitious move, especially considering the partnering with a variety of major music labels in this project. Normally one wouldn’t see such cooperation at this level of mainstream with music levels, but undoubtedly the power of Myspace’s social networking and past in helping to break celebrity and musical talents is undeniable.

Battles and Gnarls Barkley have been announced as the lineup for Myspace’s 150th secret show. The show goes down on June 8th at NYC’s Fillmore at Irving Plaza. 

I never understood how it could be a “secret show” when Myspace is promoting it. After all, they are the world’s “most popular social network.” 

According to a recent article on Wired, Universal has apparently started enforcing a policy, enacted six months ago (but that artists are only now hearing about), where on third-person sites that can have embedded music, such as Myspace, only 90-second clips of songs can be posted, as opposed to the whole thing. I’m assuming this is in the interest of the label who are just trying to dig their own graves faster.

An interesting twist to the story is that, on a site like Myspace, the song’s current play count is maintained even with this replacement, though it will automatically reset to a big fat zero should the band replace the clip with a new full-length mp3. Classy.

The original Wired article can be found here.