Myspace considers talent search route as the bell tolls ominously

07 July 2011

by Eamonn Forde

And so it ends – not with a bang, but with a whimper.

As if the News Corp. paymasters publicly slating its performance, the revolving door on the executive floor and the fact it was offloaded at a bargain basement price of $35 million [A$32.6m] (a fraction of the $580m [A$540m] it sold for in 2005) to Specific Media weren’t bad enough, the ‘recovery plan’ for Myspace could involve an online talent search.

With Justin Timberlake on board at Specific as an investor as well as in a nebulously defined ‘creative’ role, Myspace’s new owners are hoping to revive the site’s relevance by turning the focus once again on new talent (rather than the social media discovery and sharing that informed its relaunch at the end of 2010).

Timberlake’s manager Johnny Wright told AP, "Whether it becomes a talent competition or something like that, those are things that we will still flesh out. We definitely want to bring the industry back to Myspace to really look at the talented people that have put their faces there."

More details of what the new-look Myspace will involve will be unveiled by Specific on August 15.

But haven’t we been here before? And, more importantly, has nobody learned anything since then?

There was a point around 2005 where it seemed the only thing happening around digital music, social media and brands was some form of talent search competition. Sometimes they involved labels, sometimes they didn’t – but what they all had in common was their completely inability to deliver successful signings.

In an age of X Factor and American Idol, the only way for new acts to be found, developed and given a chance to succeed in this way is through TV.

For those acts that do not want to go the TV route, there are a huge variety of ways to gather support and raise funds through sites like Icebreaker and, most significantly, Kickstarter.

What is different is that Specific has the star power of Timberlake (who, ironically, played Sean Parker in The Social Network movie about Facebook, the very service that exacerbated Myspace’s irrelevance). But is that enough, in and of itself, to revive a brand that is haemorrhaging both users and relevance by the day?

For a service that six years ago threatened to turn music online on its head, an ignoble end now seems certain.