A highly curated Top 8 friends list, cringey amateur poetry, and direct access to your favorite up-and-coming bands and indie music artists. While the name may send a shudder down the spines of even the most nostalgic among us, make no mistake: MySpace was once considered the coolest hangout spot on the internet.
In 2005, as social media really began to vie for the short attention span of a young generation, MySpace emerged as the dominant platform after hooking an astounding 36 million registered users. Its greatest pull (aside from an instant follow from founder Tom Anderson, surely) was arguably its unique relationship with music, from encouraging MySpacers to embed their favorite tracks into their chaotically coded profile layouts to proposing a mutual online friendship with the likes of Paramore, Janelle Monae, and Panic! At The Disco. Also playing in the background: a music industry experiencing a seismic shift triggered by the rise of the digital download, which forever disrupted not only how we obtain music, but also how we discover, promote, and engage with new artists. It all led to the birth of MySpace Records, a grand experiment designed to buck the traditional record label model and offer a new, promising future for unsigned indie talent. And for a very short time before it shut its doors in 2016, it did.
MySpace Records was a joint venture between MySpace and Interscope Records, a legacy label in the middle of a notably stacked year thanks to certified chart dwellers like 50 Cent’s The Massacre, Eminem’s Encore, and Gwen Stefani’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby., to name a few. Like any major label at the time, Interscope had the resources needed to distribute albums through traditional methods—relationships with retailers and radio stations, physical media pressing, built-in PR machines, the works. What it didn’t quite have was MySpace’s massive reach and instantaneous connection to a bevy of emerging talent from around the globe. Since its inception in 2003, MySpace had morphed into the place to tap into new music because, well, it was every-damn-where. The homepage offered artists prominent real estate through its MySpace Music hub, which greeted users right at the point of login. Radio mainstays like R.E.M. and the Black Eyed Peas were partnering with the site for their precious album rollouts, hoping to leech some of that marketing power for their projects. Most importantly, music became an essential part of nearly every user’s individual expression. How else were you supposed to communicate your otherworldly taste to profile visitors if not through the blaring, autoplayed melodies of Bright Eyes’ “Lover I Don’t Have To Love”? Every profile turned into a user’s second identity; for the artists they loved, it was a free billboard for their latest work.
MySpace prevailed as a legitimate source for everyday music discovery, and artists reaped unparalleled benefits. Gone were the days of fleeing to a big city to desperately pass out demos and stalk local open mic nights for elusive label recruiters. Now, it was as easy as uploading tracks to a few hundred eager young listeners ready to spread the love to their own equally eager social circles. What’s more, artists had the space to present their sound and image as-is (or, for bands like rap-rock outfit Hollywood Undead, which used MySpace as an ad hoc focus group before officially solidifying its lineup, the space to figure out what their sound even was) without the potentially intrusive direction of a corporate A&R department. Though that was only if they were lucky enough to catch a label’s attention in the first place.
This was especially true for more niche acts wanting to build up fanbases more efficiently and break into the mainstream. For many, the Arctic Monkeys were the poster children for MySpace’s potential as well as the blueprint for success on the platform. The U.K. rockers created a robust online presence through the platform and cultivated a rather large following, which sparked interest from notable venues—all without the assistance of a backing label. The hype earned the attention of Domino Records, who signed them in 2006 and helped release their fourth studio album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which became the fastest-selling album in U.K. history. It was a story that every MySpace artist wanted to replicate, and the platform was ostensibly more than equipped to make it happen.
So, when Anderson announced the launch of MySpace Records in late 2005—after securing huge audiences for My Chemical Romance, Lily Allen, Taking Back Sunday, and countless others—it felt like a fitting next step. Compared to the rigmarole of legacy music companies, MySpace Records’ pitch was pretty solid: “Why rely on big-box labels and their meddling, out-of-touch middle men when we can just connect you to millions of new fans and grow your career on your own terms?” The new label focused on unsigned acts that were just hitting their stride on the site, offering them a viable contract, a spot on the internet’s biggest stage, and autonomy over their own sound. Interscope handled the distribution and the external marketing, helping them grow beyond the dot-com. For indie acts, it was a sweet setup.
For its first outing, the label released MySpace Records, Volume 1, a compilation of songs that found viral fame through the platform. Featuring mostly established artists like Weezer and Fall Out Boy, the mix was more of a peacocking show of MySpace’s undeniable impact in digital promotion than a serious talent roster. But it still offered something tangible to doubters as the compilation’s physical release placed MySpace Records, which some still considered an online-only fantasy, on retail shelves right next to major label releases. MySpace Records went on to sign popular acts like Hollywood Undead, Pennywise, Christina Milian, and Kate Voegele, further legitimizing its mission.
During the first few years, MySpace Records did manage to eke out some wins. Pop punk paragons Pennywise released their ninth album, Reasons To Believe, through the label, which offered MySpace users a chance to download the album from the site for free for two weeks. It didn’t top the Billboard charts, but after 400,000 downloads, it was one of the band’s most successful releases, reconfirming MySpace’s prowess in promotion. Another signed artist, Jeremy Greene, secured a feature from Pitbull for his single “Rain,” which shot to the top of the platform as the number-one song on MySpace.
At its peak, the record label solidified social media as more than a meme machine—it was a must-have megaphone for artists. Still, even with major backing from Interscope, MySpace Records couldn’t hold its own against other major labels, which were able to provide necessary artist development and real investment. Sure, that might have come with some unsavory input and more than a few conditions, but it also came with actual resources beyond the initial album release, which MySpace Records still relied on Interscope to provide. Additionally, founder Anderson’s departure from the company in 2009 signaled MySpace’s decline in popularity and engagement, and artists were feeling the downward shift.
But of all the wounds the label endured, the same thing that gave MySpace Records life in the beginning dealt the sharpest blow in the end: As digital downloads changed the future of the industry, they also changed how we connect with artists, and those connections weren’t always the strongest. Young, rabid online fans blasting an artist’s viral tune from their social profiles and hoarding free downloads was one thing; convincing the general public to really engage with the rest of their discography and pay for live performances was quite another (and services like iTunes, which made it easier to develop casual listening habits with single-song purchasing, didn’t exactly stoke the flames of passion, either). MySpace artists might have had fervent, cult-like followings, but the label just wasn’t really prepared to deliver the Arctic Monkeys mainstream success story that everyone craved. And while other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and later Spotify certainly couldn’t guarantee the same, they did offer their own versions of artist promotion along with updated features that helped artists beyond the music release—like actual, honest-to-goodness monetization (though, today’s more vocal artists probably wouldn’t put the words “Spotify” and “fair compensation” in the same sentence). MySpace Records simply couldn’t keep up, and by 2016, after the site had all but shuttered, the scrappy label became just a footnote in the history of digital innovation.
Part of MySpace’s early-day charm rested on its ability to share new music without making users feel as if they were being actively marketed towards. These days, labels are way more shameless about pushing their artists onto TikTok, if their dead-eyed dance challenges and forced, awkward lipsyncing to passing trends have anything to say about it. As a label, MySpace Records won’t be remembered in history as one of the greats. But for a brief moment, it proved that community and real passion could triumph over corporate sheen—something today’s algorithms still struggle to recapture.
