VentureBeat

The much anticipated MySpace Music is geared to launch tonight, providing a platform for both major and independent labels and artists to promote and sell their music. The monetization potential of MySpace music is driving a great deal of interest to the new platform, as MySpace has always been considered a useful promotional platform for artists.

Despite tension between some indie labels and MySpace along with its major record label partners (the record labels have invested in MySpace Music, and some indie labels have reported that they’ve been unable to upload their music in recent weeks), MySpace representatives close to the matter have assured me that the goal for MySpace Music is to offer monetization and promotional services for all independent labels and musicians.

Though the MySpace Music launch has been delayed for some time now, the launch was officially slotted to be unveiled tonight. All four major record labels have entered an agreement with MySpace for the new music platform, including the latest holdout EMI. The Orchard, an independent media label, has also juped on board board with MySpace Music. Users will be able to stream full versions of songs for free, and add songs to their own custom playlists, which can remain private or be shared amongst friends.

In touring the new MySpace Music platform with senior VP of product strategy Steve Pearman, I also learned that a large focus for MySpace Music is the social discovery aspect of music sharing and recommendation. This is an expected and pleasing portion of MySpace Music, as it helps divert attention away from the fact that MySpace Music is not an MP3 store — all purchases and downloads will be handled by Amazon.

It also looks to leverage MySpace’s social network, tapping into existing connections and providing the types of features and media-sharing we’ve all hoped MySpace would one day be able to do. The music recommendation engine will be based on user behavior, such as the number of users that grab a particular song from a given user’s playlist, in order to determine top songs, playlists, and influential users. Purchase data for Amazon MP3s will also be used for chart creations, to show top songs.

Given Amazon’s participation in the MySpace Music initiative, and especially its new application on the upcoming Google Android phone, the question of MySpace’s interest on the mobile front was also addressed by Pearman, who noted that there is a great deal of dedication by MySpace on the mobile end, though the relationships with the record labels, the technology behind mobile music and the the copyright laws for mobile music streaming have determined our current offerings. If it’s any consolation, your MySpace Music playlists will be available anywhere you can access your MySpace account, and that includes mobile devices. Streaming is not yet available, but ringtones are.

Will the recommendation engine, along with DRM-free MP3s and the cooperation of all major record labels, be enough to compete with the likes of Apple’s iTunes? There have been plenty of times when I was frustrated with the basic recommendation capabilities that iTunes offers, and quickly turned to a third-party application like Last.fm to find songs I may be interested in purchasing. Then again, I can purchase songs through iTunes with a click on Last.fm as well.

Nevertheless, wrapping these capabilities up in a music-oriented network like MySpace, where users can take advantage of existing friends, contends with iTunes, Last.fm, iLike, and a slew of social networks geared towards providing MP3 sales and recommendations. Perhaps this type of partnership is what Amazon needs to better compete with iTunes.

updated
The Snap Summit 2.0 conference yesterday in San Francisco was supposed to be about the new wave of social applications, but it turned into a Facebook conference.

Here’s why: The number of Facebook applications and downloads just keeps growing — at a faster rate than other social network companies are experiencing.

Dave Morin, the senior platform manager at Facebook, was the event’s main attraction. He opened his talk with a story about a woman he had met outside. She had created a Facebook application “Easter Eggs” three weeks ago. She built it in a week with the Ruby on Rails programming tools. She released it and saw it grow to more than 300,000 users. She sold the application on Tuesday. While this is an unusually good scenario, there are still many developers trying their luck: More than 100 such apps are launching every day.

And now Facebook’s going to be launching a new e-commerce technology, giving users and applications better ways to make, bill and receive payments in a “frictionless way,” meaning applications can make money beyond just through advertising.

So there’s even more reason for developers to jump in and build applications.

Facebook now has 67 million active users. It’s like an obsession for many, despite the general skepticism about the revenue potential of social networks and the widgets that live on them.

Stanford professor BJ Fogg is actually paid to teach on the psychology of Facebook. During his talk at the Snap Summit 2.0, he recounted lessons that came from teaching students who created Facebook applications. These apps had 16 million users by the end of the ten-week class.

Fogg recounted facts well-known to insiders, but which served to remind of the astounding growth of Facebook applications in the early days — such as iLike, a music discovery app, which hit nearly a million users a week after it launched on Facebook’s developer platform in May of last year. “I would wager that no company grew so fast in history,” he said. “It was clear that something special was happening.” Read the rest of this entry »