— YouTube is expected to announce on Wednesday a new program — dubbed
“Musicians Wanted” — to lure independent musicians to its social
networking site.
The program targets independent artists by offering
them an easy way to create their own home page, or channel, on YouTube
and share in the ad revenues generated by their videos. Up until now,
YouTube has only offered the revenue sharing option to artists who have
contracts with record labels or who have carved out special contracts
with the video sharing site.
“We’re now opening up the program to all independent musicians,” said
For YouTube, which announced a similar program
called “Filmmakers Wanted” in January, the effort is part of a larger
push by the
video site to generate more revenue and become entertainment
destination for viewers, rather than just a repository for homemade cat
videos.
For MySpace, competition from the world’s largest
search company comes at a time when the site is struggling to regain
some of its former luster, when
Despite its recent travails and management turmoil,
MySpace Music remains the No. 1 music site, according to comScore. Last
month, MySpace Music logged about 30 million unique visitors, up 63
percent from a year earlier, browsing through the profiles of some 13
million artists on the site.
Some musicians, however, have been migrating away
from MySpace as its traffic dropped below that of other social
networks, including Facebook, whose 112 visitors in February is roughly
twice the traffic MySpace garnered in total that month, according to
comScore.
One of those is
“Activity on MySpace has died down significantly,”
said the 33-year-old independent musician. “No doubt people still go
there, but my use of it has really minimized. MySpace was a trend. And
trends are just that. They come and go.”
YouTube’s approach is more video-centric, while
MySpace focuses more on allowing users to quickly sample and discover
music. MySpace also lets artists sell concert tickets from their
MySpace page via a partnership with LiveNation and Ticketmaster.
But the two are increasingly incorporating similar
features, including the ability for fans to buy digital music downloads
and sell merchandise. While both capture millions of eyeballs a day,
they face a similar challenge, said
“The big issue for both YouTube and MySpace is: How
do they monetize this huge audience?” Crupnick said. “This is an
industry that’s lost 50 percent of its revenue in the last decade.”
