Myspace & News Corp Add another piece to the puzzle
Piece by piece, News Corp is becoming a digital-music mogul. This morning, the media giant announced that it will pay approximately $188 million for a controlling 51% interest in Jamba, VeriSign's mobile-music arm. The big names just keep coming.... Myspace, Crazy Frog, American Idol, SnowCap, The Simpsons, Google... News Corp is certainly positioning itself for global domination of the social market.
You may recognize Jamba as the company behind the infectious Crazy Frog animated ringtone -- the one that was so popular that it even bumped Coldplay off the top of the United Kingdom music charts one week.
You may recognize Snocap's founder Shawn Fanning from a little company called Napster. You remember, he changed the face of music, peer-to-peer, and even the record industry! Last week, MySpace announced that it is teaming up with SNOCAP to allow select artists to sell digital downloads through its highly trafficked site.
You're of course familure with Google, yep... they're a key player in Myspace's advertising. Google will populate the site with paid-search ads.
It probably won't be long before that same initiative has the site selling popular ringtones and mobile content to its users. Then it would likely open up the playing field to let unsigned artists market their own ringtones to fans, friends, and family members.
Lions and Tigers.. Oh My!
Whats next?
It seems Myspace runs in house efforts first... and we have seen just about everything tried. Now they're partnering and snapping up the little guys. We'll have to wait and see.....
