• CNet, Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:01 PM

CNet checks in with MySpace Music, the joint venture from MySpace and the big four record labels, which is now more than five months old. In an interview, President Courtney Holt summarizes the first five months thusly: "Our traffic is huge. Our usage is very high. People are doing a lot of different things with music on our platform." For example, more than 100 million playlists have been created so far, and it was only a matter of days before the service recorded its billionth stream.

MySpace Music is still evolving, however. Recently, the site has improved its search features, tweaked its music player and added an activity feed to artists' pages. There are also "album pages" that give users a destination for purchasing albums, but also serve as proxy profile pages for artists that haven't created their own MySpace pages.

As CNet's Caroline McCarthy points out, MySpace got its start as an independent music hub before turning into the world's largest social networking site after News Corp. acquired it in 2005. However, mid way through last year, the social networking giant was usurped by Facebook as the Web's No. 1. Since then, McCarthy says, "we've seen a lot of signs that MySpace has changed its strategy to reflect a return to its music and media roots." MySpace Music is the biggest movement in that direction. In the future, McCarthy says we can expect more tools and features for MySpace Music, in addition to more music videos, more music-centric video programming, and more merchandising and ticket sales.

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