Remember when you logged in to MySpace and watched your home page slowly load? Maybe you queued up your favorite song as your profile track or agonized over your top eight friends' choice. Back then, your friend count, profile skin, and auto-playing music defined your online identity. MySpace was where friendships were made, bands were formed, and meme culture was born. It was clunky, personal, and completely customizable, with glittery backgrounds, scrolling text, and a sense of community right on your computer screen.
Before algorithms took over social networking, MySpace was all about pure expression. From the start, the platform was setting the tone for the future of digital culture. It was there when the first viral internet videos came out and when embedding YouTube clips for friends became popular. It is a place that lives on in the memories of those early users who remember setting up their first “About Me” section and debating over the best HTML hacks to make their profiles stand out. HTML page customization later became a feature of Tumblr, followed by adding an auto-playing song to the page.
Years later, MySpace has shifted from a social media impulse to a quieter role in the digital archives. The latest posts on the website are from 2022, and the website seems to have stopped working completely. Yet, its influence on modern social media is undeniable.
What MySpace Actually Was
In the early days of social networking, MySpace was the first global social platform on the Internet. It combined personal expression with social connections and even boosted the digital economy. It grew really fast and had a massive number of users, which made it a great place for advertisers.
In 2006, MySpace struck a considerable advertising deal with Google, guaranteeing $900 million over three years. This deal brought in more money for MySpace and showed that social media platforms could be great places to advertise. MySpace was launched on 1 August 2003 and was undoubtedly ahead of its time. It enabled users worldwide to build custom profiles, add friends, share personal updates, and discover multimedia content. It was the place where all the subcultures could form and share their style. At its peak between 2005 and 2009, MySpace had more daily traffic than even Google, and its influence extended well beyond social interactions into tech and business.
In addition, MySpace had a huge impact on the music industry. It transformed how artists connected with fans, promoted their music and engaged with the broader music community.
"MySpace had a transformative influence, particularly in convincing traditionally slow-to-adapt record labels that the internet was a powerful medium for connecting artists and fans on a larger scale than they had previously understood," said Chad Gerber, Founder & CIO at Meloscene in an email interview with Kill the DJ.
Place of Digital Self-Expression
The platform was the ultimate gathering place for early Internet subcultures, a platform where goths, emos, indie kids, scene kids, and punks could all find their peers and create digital spaces that reflected their unique styles. Highly personalized profiles, with customizable HTML layouts, music playlists, flashing GIFs, and Top Friends feature, all that allowed users to express themselves in a way that felt raw and personal.
Each profile was like a mini-website where you could express your personality through colors, fonts, music, and images. For many, MySpace was a place of exploration where they could try out new personas, aesthetics, and friendships. It offered a sense of community that was unique for its time.
Kickstart for Musicians
The main thing that made MySpace unique was that it supported user-generated content. It was not designed as a dedicated music platform, but it did allow users, including musicians, to upload songs, which created a space where fans and bands could connect directly. This feature was a predecessor to digital music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Bands could share their tracks, build fanbases, and even launch careers from the platform. It has become the tool for musicians to reach fans directly, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of the music industry. This democratization of music distribution had a lasting impact on the industry’s business model.
"MySpace was incredibly helpful for indie artists, allowing them to bypass the traditional gatekeepers of major labels. Unlike TikTok or SoundCloud, MySpace existed before the internet became oversaturated with music platforms, making it the dominant space for discovering new music. It allowed artists to showcase their raw, unpolished selves to an engaged, underground-feeling audience. Its impact was greater than TikTok or SoundCloud because it was the first platform to let fans intimately explore both the music and personal lives of artists within one ecosystem," Gerber shares with us.
Read also: How to Discover New Music? Just Enter the Artist You Love in Music-Map & Find Similar Tunes
As of June 2014, over 53 million songs were uploaded to MySpace by 14.2 million artists. This huge collection of music made up a big part of MySpace's content and had a massive effect on the music industry. However, in March 2019, the platform lost all the content uploaded before 2016 because of a server migration that had gone wrong. Even though it was possible to recover around 490,000 songs, the loss was devastating for many users and artists.
The platform was a key tool for A&R representatives (Artists and Repertoire) to find new talent. Bands like the Arctic Monkeys or Panic! At The Disco got their big break by growing big on MySpace, which led to some serious record deals. This showed how MySpace was a launchpad for many artists, helping them reach broader audiences and secure contracts with major labels. Such artists as Bring me the Horizon, Enter Shikari, Hollywood Undead, pioneers of crabcore Attack! Attack! have also found their road to success and a larger audience on the platform.
Many up-and-coming bands used MySpace not only to share their music but to promote tours and engage with local communities as well. This is essentially what Spotify, YouTube and social media pages are doing now altogether – but on the single platform. In this sense, MySpace paved the way for how digital platforms would operate in the music industry, focusing on direct artist-fan relationships, which are now standard on platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud.
"The good thing about MySpace was that it allowed indie artists like me to upload my music to share/showcase. Newer platforms don’t allow this, everything now has to go through a mass distribution platform of our choice. " shares Lisa Neville, an indie artist and a PR pro. "I kinda like TikTok, and very much over Instagram, to be honest. But again, we have very limited control of what we offer there unless we share it as an external link in a post. Because Facebook and Instagram are always muting our music in our own user generated content which is annoying."
The decline of MySpace was a real loss for artists and users alike. MySpace was more than just a social platform. It was a cultural hub, especially for musicians, creators, and fans.
Boost for Other Platforms
On top of that, MySpace’s open developer platform helped companies like YouTube, Zynga, and Photobucket, which got started with MySpace integrations. MySpace had a huge user base, which gave Zynga access to millions of potential players for its games. Their success on the platform helped establish the company as a significant player in social gaming, which then moved on to its later success on Facebook. Photobucket, an image and video hosting website, also saw some major benefits.
Since MySpace users often used Photobucket to host their media, it got much more traffic. Being integrated exposed Photobucket to a huge number of users, which made it a lot more popular, and people started using it more. This approach to supporting third-party developers became the norm for social media platforms, influencing the strategies of future industry leaders like Facebook.
Decline of MySpace
Back in 2005, News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million, hoping to make the most of the platform’s popularity. However, the acquisition led to a big focus on ad revenue, with intrusive ads making the user experience less than ideal. Over time, MySpace also fell behind in innovation compared to Facebook, which was introducing new features like the News Feed, status updates, and easier photo sharing. Facebook’s advancements highlighted MySpace’s technical issues, which included slow load times, profile glitches, and an outdated interface. By 2009, Facebook had overtaken MySpace’s active users.
At the top of its popularity, MySpace had over 175 million active monthly users and was valued at approximately $12 billion. However, despite its success, the platform struggled with functionality issues and design inconsistencies. Frequent server crashes, cluttered layouts, and an ad-heavy interface frustrated many users. In contrast, Facebook, launched publicly in 2004, took a more simplified approach. While Facebook continued to grow, the two platforms were visibly very different in design philosophy and strategy.
"MySpace failed to adapt as the Internet evolved and record labels began capturing the ecosystem it had created. By the time Facebook entered the scene, the MySpace community had become saturated and increasingly commercialized. Facebook offered a more streamlined and personal experience, which many users preferred," Gerber says. "MySpace had a chance to thrive if it had formed partnerships with labels and emerging media platforms. However, it failed to recognize the Internet’s constantly shifting nature and did not evolve accordingly. It also missed the opportunity to transition from an online portal to something with tangible, real-world relevance."
Facebook focused on simplicity, consistency, and a more intuitive interface that appealed to a broader audience. Facebook also prioritized user engagement and data organization, which allowed it to create an experience that did not rely on user customization. This structure was more appealing to a growing user base of different generations that valued functionality over customization. Another advantage of Facebook was its exclusivity in its early years, as the website offered a sense of community and credibility that attracted young adults.
MySpace tried to reinvent itself several times, switching its focus to music and entertainment, but it had trouble getting back on track. By 2011, Justin Timberlake had invested in the platform and led a redesign with the goal of transforming MySpace into a hub for artists and fans. Unfortunately, these efforts did not lead to success. The investment didn't succeed in getting MySpace back to where it was before. By June 2012, MySpace had only 25 million unique U.S. visitors, and by January 2013, it was ranked 215th in total web traffic. The new look and feel didn’t really do it for users or attract a new audience.
"MySpace failed massively due to the fact that it required too much customization for optimal user experience. The music offered by MySpace was limited, so there was no way for us to easily 'promote' our own music unless we searched around online for page layout codes and music codes that ended up either glitching or completely going blank after about two weeks," Lisa says. "There was this notoriety thing where if someone famous friended you, then you could show the world by adding them to your top friends. At least then maybe someone important would think you’re important and give your tunes a listen. The failure to update to a newer interface was a company choice, so they most definitely could’ve thrived through the birth of streaming. As a matter of fact, they would likely be doing much better than Facebook at this point."
Nowadays, MySpace has a tiny audience compared to what it used to have. It is mainly seen as a throwback and does not play much of a role in music. Or anything at all, to that matter. They last updated the site’s privacy policy on January 9, 2023, but it has been in read-only mode since then.
A Faded Presence Among the Giants
Once a powerhouse for music discovery and direct artist-fan engagement, MySpace now exists as a shadow of its former self. In the early days of MySpace, approximately 80% of its user base consisted of artists and musicians. By June 2014, 14.2 million artists had uploaded over 53 million songs to MySpace. However, in comparison to those good old days, in October 2024, it received approximately 1.9 million visits globally, which is quite small.
Back in the mid-2000s, MySpace was a key social platform for launching careers and letting artists reach fans directly. But in 2024, it has been overtaken by more advanced, user-friendly streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and even newer ones like Tidal, SoundCloud, and YouTube Music. As music streaming changed, the simplicity, extensive catalogs, and intuitive interfaces created a fundamentally different user experience that left MySpace behind.
Today’s major streaming services use recommendation algorithms, curated playlists, and exclusive content deals, which MySpace does not have. Spotify, for instance, uses sophisticated algorithms and AI-driven personalization to determine what each user likes based on how they listen to music. Apple Music offers high-resolution streaming and exclusive content deals with major artists. These features make it easier for listeners to discover new music and get more involved with artists, which MySpace could not keep up with.
"After a while, MySpace just became this annoying platform full of VH1 and iPod ads. I don’t actually miss it because of the newer available technology, of course. But if it were to come back with a modern appeal, you can absolutely trust that we’ll all leave Facebook and head right back over to MySpace," Lisa notes.
MySpace is still used as an archive where people can look back at old profiles, memories, and tracks. However, a lot of data was lost, so lots of former subculture kids have lost an opportunity to look at their old photos and accounts.
It doesn't look like MySpace is going to have a comeback anytime soon, especially in the age of the streaming leaders. Some people think it might, though, if it switches to a nostalgia-focused brand or becomes a niche, indie-oriented platform.
Well, we'll see.
