It used to be that you couldn’t be in a band without having a MySpace page. Wait, who are we kidding, you still need a MySpace page if you’re a band. But much like the way Facebook has eclipsed MySpace as a go-to social networking site, MySpace Music is getting significantly less action than it was a few years ago. The main culprit? YouTube.
Media measurement company BigChampagne has released some data showing just how much the two have changed in the past year. In 2008, a typical track streaming on MySpace Music for one day was equal to a week’s spins on YouTube. While it’s not metal, BigChampagne tracked the #4 song across both sites recently, Rihanna’s “Rude Boy,” and found that two years makes quite a difference.
Rihanna, “Rude Boy”MySpace Music (w/e 5/2)Rank: 4732,014 streamsYouTube (w/e 5/2)Rank: 44,282,376 video views
While this speaks to MySpace’s decline, it actually has a lot more to say about the rapid ascent of YouTube. Statistics from comScore show that in March, YouTube’s Google video views reached 13.05 billion, up from 11.95 billion in February, and 42% of all video viewership online. One reason for the quick increase is Vevo, which is YouTube-embedded, and backed by the majors, has become the largest music destination online. In December of ’09, Vevo had 35.4 million unique viewers, which edged the 33.1 million MySpace Music had for the same month.
