myspace to take on itunes?

I was just reading that myspace is going to be revamping their music service to offer musicians a chance to sell music via their profiles. Industry gurus are predicting that this move could help them to rival iTunes in their digital sales. Some are applauding this decision, and have high hopes that it will be very successful. After all, the myspace user base is so large that some of it has to payoff, right?

Unfortunately, I fall into the more jaded camp myself. Myspace already tried the digital distribution widget deal with Sno-cap and that has left a bad taste in the mouths of many musicians. I personally believe that artists would do best to create their own direct sale widget and add it to their profile. Cut out as many of the middlemen as possible. Album sales are suffering so badly these days that the least we can do is to try and get more per sale. Selling it yourself results in more accountability and on-time royalties, too. The only downside is that you're still going to need some sort of credit card processing service which will charge a fee. I personally use a Drupal-based storefront on my music website, with PayPal processing [payments on the back-end. The only real problem is that PayPal charges a flat fee and then a percentage. That flat fee really eats into your profit when you're talking about pay-per-track costs.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this new myspace music service. I suspect that the artists who will most benefit are those who aren't web savvy enough to explore other options. And in their case, they will be paying (myspace) for the convenience of (hopefully) an easy setup configuration. I just hope that myspace doesn't decide to outlaw any other forms of digital sales from their profiles. Only time will tell.