MySpace announces "MySpace Music" with major labels

Landmark venture with Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music

3 April 2008 16:46 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

The long running rumours have borne fruit - MySpace has made a major move into the online music market.

The social networking site and three of the world's largest music companies, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group have announced the formation of a "landmark joint venture" - MySpace Music.

The new company marries "the most popular music community in the world" with the what's being called most comprehensive catalogue of music content available online, unveiling a host of new music services.

The vision for MySpace Music is to build on the existing popularity of the MySpace Music platform by creating a "fully integrated 360 degree global music solution".

Rolling out in the next couple of months, this will be an e-commerce platform within MySpace that will include DRM-free digital downloads, ad-supported audio and video streaming, and a mobile storefront.

For users, the claims is that MySpace Music will have the richest music experience on the web by enabling the site's global community to discover music and then download, stream and personalise music content to their on user pages.

More of business announcement at this stage, we'll bring you more on what this means to the consumer as specific features and services are revealed.