Tag Archives: MySpace Music
Former MySpace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro Raises Funding To Launch A Facebook Alternative

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.
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News Corp Rumored To Be Handing Off MySpace To Vevo

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.
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Rumor: MySpace To Buy Out iMeem

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.
News Corp. Net Income Drops $1.7 Billion Since Last Year, Of Which MySpace Caused $203 Million

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]
