News Corp's MySpace in tie-up with Snocap by Leslie Wines

copyright MarketWatch.com
Published: September 2, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- News Corp's MySpace.com social networking site is forming a partnership with Snocap Inc., a service that facilitates sales of musical downloads, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

The Wall Street Journal report described Snocap as a "back-end service for selling music downloads."
MySpace has been testing a Snocap service, formed by the founder of Napster, that allows visitors to MySpace to buy songs for 79 cents each.

"The precise nature of the relationship between News Corp. and Snocap isn't clear, but people close to the situation said News Corp. could end up with a minority position in Snocap," the newspaper said. Representatives of News Corp. and Snocap declined to comment, the Journal said.

MySpace.com is extremely popular with young people and has more than 100 million registered users, who post information about themselves, their friends and their interests. Many music fans use the sites to make contact with musicians and bands. The newspaper noted that this segment of MySpace users could enable News Corp. (NWS :20.06, +0.19, +1.0% ) to challenge Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL :68.38, +0.53, +0.8% ) popular iTunes Music Store.

Apple has dominated the musical download category since launching its 99-cent download service in 2003.

Separately, the FT.com reported that MySpace will start selling music downloads by the end of the year, "marking the first broad attempt to turn the fast-growing online community site into a commercial powerhouse." "Because of Apple's lock on core pieces of technology in the digital music business, however, the service is highly unlikely to carry music from established acts, according to industry executives and analysts," the FT.com said. The U.K.-based newspaper predicted the MySpace service would cater to amateur bands hoping to generate sales.

Leslie Wines is a reporter for MarketWatch in New York.

LINKS: http://www.snocap.com/ - http://www.wsj.com/
ABOUT SHAWN FANNING'S SNOCAP: http://www.clubic.com/actualite-20744-le-fondateur-de-napster-lance-son-service-snocap.html