Move over Spotify and Pandora, because there’s a new music streaming service in town. MySpace.
Pitch materials created by the parent company of MySpace, Interactive Media Holdings, have been allegedly leaked to Business Insider, detailing the firm’s plans to go head-to-head with two of the industry’s biggest music streaming services.
The deck of slides features a graph directly comparing the royalty costs associated with each hour of listening for users on Spotify, Pandora and MySpace. In the commentary underneath, Interactive Media Holdings boasts that it can do the job for significantly less.
“MySpace has a significant cost advantage wih respect to the music streaming costs compared to Spotify and Pandora because our proprietary 27,000,000 song library from unsigned artists accounts for ~50 percent of song plays on our services and has a zero cost basis,” it reads.
While that is indeed true, it’s only because Pandora and Spotify haven’t yet tried their hand at providing a free and open platform for unsigned artists. Comparing the two is therefore a little bit unfair, perhaps.
However, the company also emphasises that MySpace and Pandora pay the lower “Radio rate” on a signficant number of songs owned by the major labels. Spotify, meanwhile, has to pay the “On-Demand rate” for the majority of songs it offers through its online service.
Although we’ve seen glimpses of the new, redesigned MySpace in a recent video reveal, we have never seen or heard the social network comparing itself to these services – at least not in such a direct way. Another slide from the pitch materials, which are thought to be dated from November 16, shows the reach of each service compared side-by side:
Myspace
- 28 million (U.S reach)
- Worldwide territory rights
- 42 million (audio catalog)
- 100,000 (video catalog)
Pandora
- 21 million (U.S. reach)
- U.S. only territory rights
- 800,000 (audio catalog)
- No video catalog
Spotify
- 12 million (U.S. reach)
- U.S., U.K, Nordics territory rights
- 15 million (audio catalog)
- No video catalog
The international reach for each service, however, was not specified.
The pitch materials also reveal other interesting aspects of MySpace’s comeback plan for the coming years. Interactive Media Holdings say they expect to expand their revenue model from brand sponsorship and also a mobile subscription model, which they expect to launch in the second quarter of 2013.
They also mention a transaction model for e-commerce, including artist merchandise, event ticketing and music downloads, which will launch at the same time.
As a result, Interactive Media Holdings believe that MySpace will soon be a real profit driver. Its revenue projections, starting at $9 million for last year and $15 million for this year, jumps to $58 million in 2013, before rising again to $102 million in 2014 and $140 million in 2015. It’s a pretty optimistic view, to say the least.
Interactive Media Holdings was using the pitch materials to try and attract an extra $50 million of investment. The final slide reveals that it will use $10 million of that on marketing the website’s relaunch, followed by between $15 and $25 million in order to renew its various music label deals, as well as another $15 to $25 million for “general working capital” purposes.
It’s rare to see documents detailing the plan of a service like MySpace in quite so much detail. We’ve already been shown how the new design will work, as well as some of the thoughts from new owners Tim and Chris Vanderhook and Justin Timberlake.
The new site, created for, by, and about artists, has a lot of work to do if its to become the social network and music streaming titan it once was. It’s starting to roll out right now though, and initial impressions seem pretty positive.
Image Credit: MARCEL ANTONISSE / Getty Images
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