Myspace vs. Last.fm
This is an interesting interview with the COO of Last.fm, Spencer Hyman. I think that he is pretty spot on regarding the need for huge databases of music but the importance of social networking in music referral cannot be forgotten. New music largely spreads through word of mouth marketing which is harnessed beautifully through social networking. Clearly the information on the music and ideally streaming samples have to be stored somewhere to augment the word of mouth buzz but combining the two in the way that last.fm has done so is a great opportunity. I think that last.fm is better suited for the task of music discovery than myspace simply because it has a clearly stated purpose. Myspace’s original intention was not music discovery and they are not attempting to take advantage of their extensive user base in a post-hoc manner while last.fm users are using with the intention of music discovery. Key difference I think.
