LOS ANGELES, CA. & NEW YORK, NY. (Top40 Charts/ SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT) - MySpace, the world's most popular social network, announced today it has signed a new licensing agreement with SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT to enable MySpace's 70 million U.S. monthly active users to experience streaming music videos, as well as select audio material and other content, from SONY BMG's artists. The deal, which calls for MySpace and SONY BMG to share in sponsorship and advertising revenues, underscores both organizations' commitment to building new business models that benefit artists and consumers alike.
'MySpace has always served as a powerful promotional platform for music and we're pleased to work with SONY BMG to take it to the next level,' said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. 'We look forward to working with SONY BMG and the rest of the music industry to enable people to share their love of music with one another through the next generation of MySpace music services.'
Under the terms of the deal, SONY BMG will license music videos, select audio material, and other content from its extensive artist roster and will make the content available on its artists' MySpace profile pages. MySpace and Sony BMG will share in sponsorship and advertising revenues generated from the music videos and profile pages. Additionally, MySpace will work with SONY BMG to promote the music company's artists throughout the site.
"We are happy to be working with MySpace as we continue to develop new approaches to doing business online," commented Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business & U.S. Sales, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT. "This new effort is a great way to build new audiences for our artists, bring value to fans, and offer exciting new opportunities to advertisers. We look forward to working closely with MySpace as we roll out this ambitious new project."
With more than 7 million bands, MySpace Music empowers artists and labels to establish an interactive dialogue with their fan base by creating profiles to connect with fans via mail and blogs, post tour dates, upload music, virally share promotional widgets, and debut albums to MySpace 110 million global users. MySpace provides access for fans to the world's most popular artists through a number of offline events including the Secret Show intimate concert series, The List concert productions, MySpace LIVE webcast events, and Hey Play This � a by-request artist session for MySpace users.
Each year MySpace features hundreds of highly anticipated content and albums exclusives. For Sony BMG artists, MySpace has recently hosted Secret Shows for bands such as Good Charlotte, Franz Ferdinand, Clipse, Tenacious D, Ray LaMontagne, Yung Joc, and Slayer. Hey Play This � events for labels acts have included Ben Folds and Velvet Revolver, and music content exclusives have featured acts such as Bruce Springsteen and Diddy as well as exclusive album premieres from Sean Kingston (first artist to break one million streams in one day), Mark Ronson, Tori Amos, Modest Mouse, and the Editors.
MySpace will continue to evolve its industry leading promotional music platform by integrating new revenue models, features and partner integrations.
Financial terms of the Sony BMG deal were not disclosed.
