Myspace recently went through a rebanding.
Quite frankly the changes they made are really cool, but it seemed a little bit deflated to me.
They had resigned to the fact that facebook was number 1 and they were some sort of media hub. At least that's what I surmised.
And myspace treated this announcement like it was huge, but it really wasn't that big of a change. The gloss over the top had changed, the design was cleaner and the logo had changed to something questionable. The biggest change was that they were now becoming another place to find content for facebook.
I think they made a huge tactical error. myspace, and its parent corporation, had the chance to take the site in a different direction and make it something really special. A destination site, not a pass through site.
The one thing that people still use myspace for is a place to discover new bands and music. And a place for bands to get discovered. It's the only reason I still go there.
So my thoughts are as follows. Myspace should have reinvented itself as an online music label with a completely different method of distribution. They have the means to measure a band's popularity built right into the site, pageviews and song listens. They could even see which bands are getting the most interaction and posting the most show dates.
Then at the end of the year/month/quarter they could sign the most popular bands and give them recording contracts.
I confess I know very little about the internals of a company like myspace but something like this should have been an option.
Starting a music label is not a particularly new idea. It seems like every artist has his or her own these days. But no site has the capacity to do it as well as myspace. No site or talent agency in the world has the amount talent trying to break into the industry.
Very often this issue is changing the way we think about something. In this case shifting a social network into a music company. But this would be a socially dirven music company and that could have been something tremendously groundbreaking.
If you're reinventing don't just delude yourself into thinking what you are doing is big. Actually do something big.
(I started writing this a week ago but the future is not looking bright for myspace as Newscorp announced they are getting ready to sell myspace today.)