Myspace gains 1 million users, touts more music than Spotify

Maybe Justin Timberlake and friends weren’t so crazy after all.

Myspace, the once dominant social-networking site that faded into obscurity during Facebook’s rise to dominance, added 1 million new users over the past month, according to the company.

“The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for Myspace,” said Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Myspace. “And the 1 million-plus new user accounts we’ve seen in the last 30 days validates our approach.”

A team of investors bought out Myspace in June for the fire-sale price of $35 million. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. paid (many would say overpaid) $580 million for it in 2005.

The new owners, most notably pop star/actor Timberlake, have effectively stopped trying to compete with Facebook and other social sites, instead focusing on Myspace’s superior platform for posting and listening to music.

Monday’s release from Specific Media credited the site’s new music player, with access to more than 42 million songs, as offering the Web’s biggest collection of free music.

By comparison, Internet darling Spotify, which launched in the United States in July, was claiming 15 million songs at that time.

“Myspace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love,” Vanderhook said. “Consumers are getting excited about Myspace again – a testament to a great music product.”

The new Myspace player offers unlimited, on-demand listening to both established and unsigned artists, personalized radio modes, a recommendation engine and easy integration with Facebook.

Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the resurgence (which has amounted to roughly 40,000 new sign-ups a day) will continue. But with Spotify beginning to limit the number of songs users with free accounts can play, it seems possible there could be space for a new online music player serving up similar content for free.