MySpace Music Screenshots Leak: Can You Spot The Differences?
MySpace Music–the joint venture between the social-networking site and the major labels that is apparently going to revolutionize digital music by putting opportunities to actually buy songs and other music-related widgetry right into artists’ profile pages on the site–is still trudging toward its now-one-week-late launch, and I guess to remind people that we’re supposed to be excited about the whole thing, someone leaked a few blurry screenshots of the project. (Kind of odd that the screenshots of a site that’s all about making money for Big Music were leaked to the nerd-insider site TechCrunch, which is firmly in the “music should be free at all times” camp, but I’m sure the fine people at MySpace know exactly what they’re doing in the PR department. Cough.) What new, exciting changes will you see the next time you visit your favorite band’s MySpace page? Let’s do a side-by-side comparison of these alleged prototypes and what they’re replacing.
The current versions of these pages are on top; the “new” versions are on bottom.
SCREENSHOT 1: THE MAIN PAGE
I guess it looks slightly cleaner. Although one has to wonder, with all the service’s indie label-related issues, whether or not the removal of the Top Artists section was an easy way to de-emphasize artists whose albums aren’t distributed by one of the site’s major-label revenue-sharers. Especially since the always-sketchy “top artists” list, which currently features a bunch of artists whose material is pushed by Atlantic Records in its “indie” list, remains. Although I guess that could also be looked at as a strategic move.
SCREENSHOT 2: THE PROFILE PAGE
Well, I’ll give them this: That commerce interface is sure more elegant than the old Snocap widgets. I eagerly await half of the musicians on the site having their 1,945 embedded Flash widgets curl up and stop working as a result of mysterious incompatibilities with it.
There’s a third screenshot that TechCrunch is saying is a “user admin panel,” although it looks like it may be cleaned-up version of Song History to me:
Much like the future of MySpace Music, however, it’s way too blurry to make out.
Leaked MySpace Music Screenshots [TechCrunch]
