I’m about to write something that I never expected to think, let alone write.
Myspace is cool again.
There. I said it. It’s out in the open. And it’s also true. The new Myspace launched on Tuesday, with partial-owner Justin Timberlake’s new single leading the charge. The focus of this new Myspace is exactly what it was good at when it was the old Myspace. You know, the one that was vacated by many in favor of another blue-themed Internet giant. That is, the new Myspace is all about music. Before you go investigating, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the site’s new features and why it’s so surprisingly, well, cool.
When you first go to Myspace’s home page, you’ll be directed to either sign in or join the new Myspace (you can also choose to go to the old Myspace, though I wouldn’t recommend that). Assuming you’re creating a new account, you will then be prompted to select a category of user that most applies to you. The selections range from “Band” to “Brand” to “Venue” to “Fan” to “Writer/Journalist,” and there are far more than that. I’m not sure that this necessarily tailors your home page, but it may tailor suggestions on other people to connect with on the site.
After filling out your account information, you finally get to the new homepage. It looks sleek. Very, very sleek. A cool side-scroller takes you through the main page until you see a welcome message and three headings: “Discover,” “Search” and “Connect.” The connect feature is pretty simple: just connect with artists or people in order to see their updates.
The “Search” function is cool in itself, because there is no search bar on the new Myspace. The site’s blurb instructs you to “Seriously, just start typing.” Doing so triggers an automatic search. It’s incredibly convenient and can be done from any page on the site. To exit the search, just click the exit button in the top right hand corner.
This new search feature also reveals the full extent of Myspace’s new focus on music. There is a huge amount of music on Myspace, and it’s completely free to listen to. It’s like Spotify without the need to download a separate application and Pandora without the limit on song skipping per hour. It’s an amazing database of music, and once you click play on a song or artist or album, you can continue to search on other pages within the site and the music continues to play in a convenient toolbar that runs across the bottom of the screen.
The best feature of the new Myspace, however, is the “Discover” feature, which makes it really easy to find new music from bands you know of, and from bands you’ve never heard of before. In the “Trending” section, you can read features on artists to watch, as well as watch video clips. Other sections in the Discover page are as follows: “People,” “Music,” “Mixes,” “Videos” and “Radio.” Each of these sections is pretty self-explanatory, but that doesn’t make them any less cool.
Now, the inevitable question that will be asked of the new Myspace is “Can it compete with Facebook?”
It doesn’t need to. The new Myspace may have social media elements to it, but it is not primarily a status update, message, comment and photo uploading site like Facebook. The new Myspace is a music and video community, and an extremely well-constructed one. Facebook is not music-friendly, nor does it really try to be. The two sites are completely separate entities that can exist and thrive completely independent of one another.
I hope this new Myspace thrives, because Myspace, after all these years, has finally grown into itself. And it’s grown into something really exciting.
Do you still have an old Myspace account? Will you create a new one? Email Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu to talk about the new site. “B-Sides” runs every Thursday.