Myspace Is Back

Myspace, which holds a dear place in the black heart of the 16-year-old emo within us all, is making a comeback. The now-archaic social media platform, synonymous with misleading photographic angles and obnoxious layouts, is set for a massive relaunch. You may be gesturing wildly at your desk, exclaiming, "but it's Facebook's world now, bitch." Too true, my friend, too true. But the new Myspace has been "built from the ground up" as one of the developers from its redesign company, Josephmark (which is based in Australia), explains.

The new Myspace interface will be all about music. One of the things I personally miss about Myspace was finding new music (even if they were Nu Rave bands with architectural haircuts — it was 2006, after all), and no other platform has engaged me in this respect since. And we're all well-versed in its success stories — Lilly Allen being the biggest name that springs to mind. "When you have more music than Spotify it would be crazy to try and target a different niche," says the Josephmark developer. "Myspace are not trying to compete with Facebook, if anything their new competitors are now Spotify, Last.fm and Rdio." You can even sign in using Facebook. Postmodern.

So how will the new Myspace be set apart from its competitors? An insights feature promises to provide unparalleled access to information about an artist's fans. A band will be able to see who is listening to what and where, and can feature fans on their profiles who have a large social media influence. Users who fancy themselves as Laptop DJs V.20 will be able to create multimedia mixes of audio and video, using ALL OF THE MUSIC in the Myspace catalogue. If Josephmark's previous work for music site We Are Hunted is anything to go by, then they know their shit.

A teaser video, which "is definitely not staged" (even though it definitely is), further illustrates the New World Order of Myspace by way of one David Croft. David, who we assume is a fictional character, is indicative of the new Myspace target audience — not identity-confused teenagers in their bedrooms, but rather graphic design-types who live in LA, take photos of their piccolo coffees and have playlists named 'Dope Tunes' (really, this is all in the video). The layout looks clean and minimal, appropriating elements of Tumblr and other social media like Twitter. Justin Timberlake, a co-owner of Myspace, also features heavily in the video.

As the Josephmark developer says, "don't judge the site people until you try it." Head to new.myspace.com and enter your email address to receive an invitiation to sign up when the site launches. Given Facebook's general fuckedness of late (attempting to stalk you whilst ruining your attempts to stalk others; potentially publishing your private messages on your Timeline), it seems like Myspace is launching at a high time. 

Ingrid Kesa