Remember MySpace? Well the service is about to get a makeover, the owners confirmed in an interview with Forbes Magazine. The redesign will focus on what it does best – music discovery and promotion.
The redesign beta is currently employee-only, but will open up to artists later in the year before a general release. Telling Forbes, Tim Vanderhook said that they had to trash “a billion dollars’ worth of technology investment” because of problems such as slow page load times.
They’ve released little details about the new site, but they said that it is to get artists to return to the site after the previous relaunch in 2010 “ended up alienating who their core was”, according to Vanderhook. It will also take full advantage of the massive library of 42 million songs – though, most of are from unsigned and unknown artists.
MySpace was bought from News Corporation a year ago by Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for US$35 million. Under Specific’s ownership, MySpace is gaining some resurgence with 30 million unique visitors and rising.
Which means that MySpace is back – though as a social network, maybe not. A music discovery service that could rival Pandora, Spotify and Rdio, however? Maybe.