MySpace adds music features in bid to reinvent itself

As part of its attempt to reinvent itself, MySpace unveiled a slew of new music products, including a massive collection of music videos, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. But Van Natta strove to keep the packed session on the topic of new music services being dished up on the site. MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta took the main stage Wednesday to talk about the lagging social network's business strategy and its position behind rival Facebook.

Separately, reports circulated Wednesday that Google was also planning a music service . The company announced MySpace Music Videos, which is set up to be one of the most biggest collections of online videos. And to give users better access to the video library, MySpace also unveiled a new Video Search Tab. Van Natta explained that they worked with the company's music label partners to gather fully licensed music videos. The tab is designed to help users search for videos, songs and artist profiles. The dashboard is designed to give bands and singers with MySpace profile analytics on who is listening to their music and how they're interacting with it. "We think MySpace has the opportunity to be the next generation digital distributor of content," said Van Natta, who was an early executive at Facebook before leaving to join MySpace. "MySpace is positioned uniquely to be the place where the socialization of content occurs." MySpace has been slipping in popularity as rival Facebook moved to the top of the social networking pile.

MySpace's roster of new music products also includes an Artist Dashboard. Last December, Facebook drew almost twice as many worldwide visitors as MySpace. At the beginning of Van Natta's presentation, the moderator polled the audience about what social networking site they used. In June, Facebook surpassed MySpace in the U.S. , which had been MySpace's stronghold. A smattering of hands went up to show people who used MySpace. Later in his presentation, the MySpace CEO said he's optimistic about the company's ability to get back on its feet. "We believe that we have all of the building blocks and we need to focus on execution," he said. "If we do a great job at executing and building a great user experience... then we will realize this vision to be the place where you discover a huge amount of content through other people.

When asked who used Facebook, a sea of hands shot up, along with a ripple of laughter from the audience. "Thanks for framing that up for me," Van Natta said. If that is happening in music or other areas, like games, TV and films, it'll be easy to recognize success because you'll just know this is where a huge amount of that socialization is happening."