the last thing i have to say about myspace...ever

it's been a LONG time coming but i finally deleted my MySpace account. i've been calling MySpace detroit for a couple years not, so it shouldn't come as a huge surprise but up until this week, i haven't had a serious problem with them...they just sucked.

this week, MySpace officially bought parts of imeem (read: the technology, the users and the 4 C-level execs) and then sent a nuke to the rest of the company. without telling the 16 million imeem users and developers who use the platform, MySpace shut down the service and took away all of the playlists and community messages that had lived on the site.

when i was asked to choose a reason why i was leaving, i chose 'too much drama' - an option they provided - as the reason. here's my letter to them:

the way your company conducts business is pathetic. you purchased 16 million imeem users and then couldn't be bothered to effectively communicate with them about the changes you were making to their service. you have continually taken the big business approach, when the product you're trying to sell is a social tool for dialogue and building relationships.

if you want to compete with facebook, then you have to start thinking about your users and listening to them. winning on the music front is not going to sustain your business long term- especially considering the poor quality of your music player and all of the ads plastering your pages. i would rather pay a subscription fee to stream whatever music i want than click on your music pages. i no longer want to have anything to do with your company...and i'm not the only one.

The Future of Online Music

when i was in high school, my parents had shitty computers. i sank endless hours into the old school dial-up trying desperately to connect with my nicaraguan boyfriend, so when it came to music discovery, i was a mess. columbia records got me started with some bjork, beck and the reality bites soundtrack, but napster was a far cry from anything we could pull off at home.

in college things got better (mainly bc i was in close proximity to kids with music). then there was iTunes and the iPod, making everything portable and easy(er) - but we became obsessed with our friend's libraries so we could have the latest and greatest. i've been to 'ripping parties' where a bunch of people shared DRM free tunes, but hell if i remember what i took. with so much music, there's not that sentiment attached to a mixed tape or the thrill that comes with buying a new record. the lack of cover art is just the beginning- we don't have time to organize all of the information we're getting. it's all stuffed into folders and archives that live on our hard drives, but when do we actually dip into it?

there's freedom in a subscription service like rhapsody - you don't have to spend money on a record with only 3 good songs. hype machine gave love to the mashup darlings, making stars of dudes like atrak and fred falke, while pandora revolutionized music discovery. then lala came on the scene with ties to hip music blogs and lets you listen to any song once, before paying for a web stream or download. today, a new player is entering the scene who i believe combines the best aspects of all current music services into one service that's affordable and super fun.

mog.com is a network of music blogs- they pull together the best stories from their network and push it out in a weekly newsletter. every week, i get a newsletter from mog about new top albums, songs and stories from their community- which is a pretty cool alternative to pitchfork's way hipster approach to music. today, mog launched a new music player that gives you "all you can eat music" for 5 dollars a month. you can build and share playlists with your "real" friends AND connect with other users who have similar taste to discover new music.

i've spent the past few weeks testing out the mog player and i love it. it has the best of rhapsody and pandora in one player- you listen to an artist "radio" station, sliding a ruler to set how heavy you want that artist in rotation. this lets you choose whether or not you're in discovery mode and also gives you the option to queue an entire album or search for playlists that have your favorite artists.

i have high hopes for this baby. seeing that i spend way too much time married to my computer, it can only make my day more fun and less productive. maybe if they come up with a mobile app, i can actually get out the house more regularly.