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Major record companies and MySpace launch digital music JV

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MySpace, EMI Music, SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony ATV/ Music Publishing unveiled the new MySpace Music product injecting the world’s richest online music community with a host of new features for both users and artists.

The new suite of products, which includes an ever-growing catalogue of premium audio and video content, e-commerce offerings, and user and artist playlists, aims to further enhance the MySpace Music experience as well as provide monetization opportunities for its active music community.

Beginning today, U.S. users can purchase DRM-free MP3 music downloads through MySpace Music’s new e-commerce solution powered by Amazon MP3. Now, adjacent to licensed songs within artist profile media players, user-created playlists, and certain music editorial pages, MySpace Music will feature buy buttons that will allow users to download and purchase MP3s playable on all digital music devices, including the iPod. Similarly, users can click on a Find Ringtones button, powered by Jamster, within music players to purchase ringtones of their favorite artists.

MySpace Music hosts more than 5 million major, indie, and unsigned artists within the site’s music profiles section, which provides for a vast artist-powered collection of songs, music videos, tour dates, blogs, and photos. MySpace’s deep, long-standing ties to the music community have allowed for numerous exclusive features from the most groundbreaking musicians in the world and the its new marketing initiatives will greatly enhance the existing MySpace Music offline concert franchises including Secret Shows, MySpaceLIVE!, Transmissions, Front to Back and The List.

MySpace, Commission on Presidential Debates launch interactive toolset for MyDebates.org

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MySpace and the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) announced the launch of its toolset for MyDebates.org, a new website that will house interactive tools for viewers to virally engage in the political process, including a personalized issue scorecard, polling, reportable national statistics, live web streaming and much more.

MyDebates.org is part of a landmark partnership between MySpace and the CPD for the upcoming presidential and vice presidential debate series. The partnership marks the first time that the CPD has paired with an Internet property to include online functionality into the event series and traditional debate format.
 
When visiting MyDebates.org, users will be prompted to take an “Issues Quiz” that will assess their stance on 14 issues, including the economy, national security, the environment, same-sex marriage, education and healthcare. Once they’ve taken the quiz, users can see how their values line up with the candidates and view a state-by-state breakdown of how other Americans feel on the issues. Users will also have the option of downloading a personalized application which can be embedded anywhere on the web, for example on a blog, social networking site like MySpace, or another website. The application will provide a summary of the user’s stance on the issues, on-demand playback functionality and issue-based tracking, allowing users to track a candidate’s stance on issues they care about throughout the debate series.
 
The general election debates, a series that includes three separate presidential debates and one debate featuring the candidates running for vice president, will kick off on September 26 with a broadcast on all the major national television networks. Each historic television event captures more than 60 million worldwide viewers and will now include an entirely new audience online able to watch each debate via live web stream.