Dmitry Shapiro is the former MySpace Music CTO. Shapiro has raised funding from investors that include Draper Fisher Jurvetson to launch an alternative to Facebook called Altly. Altly will be a social network that has strong privacy controls and data ownership.

News Corporation (NASDAQ:NWSA) is rumored to be in talks to hand off MySpace.com to Vevo.com. Vevo.com is an online music video website that is partially owned by some of the top record companies. The talks are currently in preliminary stages and an agreement may not be reached.

Music is universally one of the most powerful forms of entertainment. People that capitalize on this form of entertainment have a strong sense of what sounds pleasing to consumers. Consumers themselves have also been forming their own music communities in the form of social networks since the beginning of the digital age. Below is a list of the top 20 these music social networks:

20. May Contain Music

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May Contain Music is a small music social network that hosts music, event information, venue information, and videos.

19. Flotones

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Flotones.com is small music social network that shares revenue with indie artists. You can browse digital songs, ringtones, music blogs, albums, artists, and mobile wallpapers on the website.

18. Yibster

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Yibster.com is a smaller music social network that has albums, videos, musician profiles, games, events, etc. Profiles can be customized similarly to MySpace layouts.

17. Muso City

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Muso City is a music social network where music fans, artists, and retailers can connect to each other. Indie artists can also add MP3s to the website.

16. ShareTheMusic

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ShareTheMusic.com is a website that hosts over 60,000 songs and acts as the middleman for people that want to share music. The service works in about seven different languages.

15. Gogoyoko

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Gogoyoko is a music social network that has the ability to stream and share music. Music players can be customized. Artists can set the price of the music and they also get 100% of the profit.

iMeem is a music and video streaming service that also has very popular applications on Facebook and MySpace. iMeem has over 50 employees working in San Francisco, California and the company started around November 2003. iMeem has close to $50 million in total funding since they started. Over 100 million people have used their service at some point and they have over 30 million registered users. Last year the company hired Montgomery and Co. to help find a buyer.

iMeem themselves have bought out Snocap and Anywhere.FM. Now it is rumored that MySpace is close to buying out iMeem. iMeem themselves have bought out SNOCAP and Anywhere.FM.

The reason why the acquisition hasn’t take place as of yet is because there is stakeholder approval pending. The amount for buying out the company is not expected to be high considering the amount of venture capital that iMeem had to take in for survival.

Once getting bought out, iMeem will more than likely be rolled into MySpace Music.

Earlier this week News Corporation announced their annual net income.  News Corporation owns The Wall Street Journal, FOX, and The New York Post, and MySpace.  In 2008, the company reported a net income of $5.4 billion.  This year the company announced adjusted operating income at $3.6 billion, or a $1.7 billion dollar decline from the year before.

Part of the reasons for the loss was because of $680 million in charges made at FOX Interactive Media (FIM).  FIM is the News Corp. unit that runs MySpace, Photobucket, and other web services.  MySpace itself had a net loss of $203 million.

“These declines were primarily due to lower contributions from Fox Interactive Media (FIM) and NDS. The decline in FIM operating results was driven by lower advertising revenues at MySpace and increased costs associated with the launch of MySpace Music,” wrote News Corporation in a press release.

That would explain why MySpace had major layoffs and recently shuffled around executives.  This past April, Facebook co-founder Owen Van Natta was hired by MySpace to become their CEO.

[via NYT]