MySpace Music Launches Down Under: Now Live In Australia And New Zealand

When it comes to free media streaming, the United States is flush with premium content from great sites like Hulu and MySpace Music. But aside from a handful of exceptions, the rest of the world is out of luck. Today, the balance changes a bit: MySpace has just launched its hugely popular MySpace Music service in Australia and New Zealand, bringing those regions unlimited streaming of songs and albums from all four major music labels, as well as many indies.

AU/NZ users will have access to the same features as the US site, including shareable playlists, artist activity feeds, and other social functionality. But there is at least one notable difference: while MySpace Music launched in the United States with Amazon as its partner for purchasing digital downloads, the AU/NZ version has teamed with Apple’s iTunes. MySpace wouldn’t comment on whether this is foreshadowing a larger partnership, but we may well see the Apple deal extend stateside. MySpace likely had an exclusive partnership with Amazon for the US launch, but it’s been a year (which may well have been the length of the deal), so it may soon be free to explore other options.

Since launching last fall, MySpace Music has been something of a bright spot for the otherwise faltering social network. The site has seen a tenfold growth in traffic since launching, with the US portal drawing 18.95 million users (it’s also the #1 site in time spent for the all important 18-34 demographic, though some of this can be attributed to the fact that users can leave it playing in the background). MySpace Music also recently rolled out a much improved homepage and has seen a number of exclusive releases.

MySpace Disables Auto-Play Of Profile Songs To Get Streaming Costs Under Control

MySpace Music, which launched a little less than a year ago, is the one bright spot of growth in an otherwise flatlining MySpace.

But all that popularity comes at a price - billions of free streaming songs are costing MySpace up to $10 million a month in streaming fees, says a source, and the joint venture may lose $20 million or more this year.

To minimize those losses, MySpace has made a big change to it’s product - songs no longer auto-play when you visit a MySpace user profile. Autoplays accounted for a billion or more song streams per month, and were costing MySpace a significant amount of money. Turning off that hose is a cost saving maneuver. This also has the benefit, sources say, of improving the user experience and providing labels with better listening data.

Personally, I’ve always disliked the autoplay feature on MySpace, although execs there tended to defend it as one of the distinguishing features of the service. Users can still opt-in to autoplay songs.

The product continues to improve (and the iLike acquisition should accelerate that improvement). Another key advantage MySpace Music has over competitors - their ability to lock up lots of exclusive content for users.

And the service is definitely growing. In July we reported that traffic grew tenfold over the nine months since launch: niques have grown 190% since launch in September 2008 and 1017%. It has grown 4.2 million unique monthly visitors to 12.1 million since launch. It is now solidly in the no. 2 position behind AOL Music, and growing fast.