Michael Arrington's MySpace Music review, the 100-word version
We know what TechCrunch's Michael Arrington got out of sleeping with MySpace PR executive Dani Dudeck: Screenshots of MySpace Music before the service launched. But what was Dudeck's quid to Arrington's quo? To find that, it's worth examining all the nice things Arrington has posted about her employer over the past couple of months.On MySpace's Data Availability, a feature which lets MySpace users link their profiles to other services like Twitter, versus Google's similar Friend Connect, he wrote:
MySpace is taking a much more interesting approach than Google.
In an early post about MySpace Music, Arrington gushed:
Music almost certainly plays a part of MySpace’s continued dominance of Facebook.
About MySpace friend-in-chief Tom Anderson's hacking back in the 1980s, Arrington dutifully wrote:
Frankly, my opinion of Tom Anderson just rose significantly.
A week before MySpace Music launched, Arrington quit playing games and just posted free ads for the service. None of that approached the review Arrington gave MySpace Music the morning it launched.
MySpace has done something incredible at a big picture level: they’ve created both a compelling music experience for users as well as a realistic, long term business model for labels and artists in a world where recorded music moves towards free. Depth of catalog and usability is far beyond what other free streaming services like Last.fm and iMeem currently offer. And when it comes to listening to music, the pop out player, pictured above, is excellent. It’s a great resource for users, and it’s likely to become the center of the revenue ecosystem for artists, particularly unsigned artists starting to make a name for themselves. Indie labels are in a great position, too. A lot of positive press is rolling in around this launch, and it’s much deserved.