• Ad Age , Thursday, May 14, 2009 12 PM

"MySpace Music hasn't yet saved the digital-music business, and it's a long way from adding to parent News Corp.'s bottom line," says Ad Age's Michael Learmonth. Already, the record labels that are partners in the joint music venture are starting to get fed up. They've had high expectations that the social networking giant could help drive digital sales, but so far, MySpace Music has had a lot of success attracting visitors -- 27 million uniques in April -- but not a lot of success selling downloads, which are by far the most lucrative revenue source for the labels.

"Without putting too fine a point on it, it has disappointed us so far," Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman said on an earnings call last week. "MySpace Music has been slow to create monetization tools and to be able to impact in a revenue-generating way the massive audience that they have been able to attract, and that needs to change, quite frankly."

But the service is getting a big lift from Vitaminwater this summer, Learmonth says. The Coca-Cola company is making MySpace Music the centerpiece of a summer campaign for its new flavor, Sync. Vitaminwater is shipping 24 million bottles of Sync stamped with the MySpace logo, with under-the-cap codes that can be redeemed for a free MP3 download via MySpace through its partnership with Amazon. Vitaminwater is paying for the downloads and supporting the campaign with a print, radio and in-store campaign featuring artists Carrie Underwood, Alicia Keys and 50 Cent. The campaign kicked off this month and extends through July 31.

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