Last.fm

Last.fm

Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countriesOn 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).

Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations, the user's computer or some portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user's profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it.

The current Last.fm website was developed from two separate sources: Audioscrobbler and Last.fm, which were merged in 2005.

Audioscrobbler began as a computer science project by Richard Jones while he attended the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in the United Kingdom. Jones developed the first plugins, and then opened an API to the community, after which many music players on different operating system platforms were supported. Audioscrobbler was limited to recording music its users played on a registered computer, which allowed for charting and collaborative filtering.

Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Saulyus Chyamolonskas, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer, as an internet radio station and music community site, using similar music profiles to generate dynamic playlists. The site name takes advantage of a domain hack using the top level domain of Micronesia, popular with FM radio related sites. The "love" and "ban" buttons allowed users to gradually customise their profiles. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.

The Audioscrobbler and Last.fm teams began to work closely together, both teams moving into the same offices in Whitechapel, London, and by 2003 Last.fm was fully integrated with Audioscrobbler profiles. Input could come through an Audioscrobbler plugin or a Last.fm station. The sites also shared many community forums, although a few were unique to each site.

The old Audioscrobbler site at the audioscrobbler.com domain name was wholly merged into the new Last.fm site in 9 August 2005. This launched audioscrobbler.net as a separate development-oriented site on 5 September 2005. However, at the very bottom of each of the Last.fm pages there was an Audioscrobbler "slogan", which changes each time the page is refreshed. Based on well known sayings or advertisements, these originally appeared at the top of the old Audioscrobbler website pages and were all created and contributed by the original site members.

An update to the site was made on 14 July 2006 which included a new software application for playing Last.fm radio streams and for logging of tracks played with other media players. Other changes included the improvement of the friends system and updating it to require a two-way friendship, the addition of the Last.fm "Dashboard" where users can see on one page relevant information for their profile, expanded options for purchasing music from online retailers and a new visual design for the web site (including an optional black colour scheme).

The site began expanding its language base on 15 July 2006, when a Japanese version of the site was launched. Currently, the site is available in various other languages, including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Turkish and Simplified Chinese.

In late 2006, the site won Best Community Music Site at the BT Digital Music Awards in October. Last.fm, also, teamed up with EMI on Tuneglue-Audiomap. Furthermore in January 2007 it was nominated for Best Website in the NME Awards.

At the end of April 2007, rumours of negotiations between Viacom and Last.fm emerged, suggesting that Viacom intended to purchase Last.fm for about £225 million.

In May 2007 it was announced that Channel 4 Radio was to broadcast a weekly show called Worldwide Chart that reflects what Last.fm users around the world are listening to. There are also plans to add a video section, enabling users to create their own personalised video channels.

On 30 May 2007 it was announced that Last.fm has been bought by CBS for £140 million with Last.fm's current management team staying in place.

In July 2008, the "new generation" Last.fm was launched featuring a completely new layout, colour-scheme and several new features as well as some old ones removed. This was, however, met with dissatisfaction amongst some users, who complained about, among other things, the "ugly and non-user-friendly layout," numerous bugs and slowness of the site. The new design has also removed most mentions of Audioscrobbler. A month after the redesign was launched a press release was issued by CBS crediting the redesign with generating 20% growth in the site's traffic, however industry observers pointed out that this still leaves last.fm in a distant second place behind imeem.com.

Last.fm Ltd is funded from the sale of online advertising space, monthly user subscriptions and donations. In 2004 the company received the first round of angel money, from Peter Gardner, an investment banker who was introduced to the founders as early as 2002. A second round was led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman), who bought into Michael Breidenbrueckers shares as well. In 2006 the company received the first round of venture capital funding from European investors Index Ventures, whose General Partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer also joined Last.fm's board of directors, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glaenzer (Chair).. On Tuesday, 24 March 2009 it was announced on the official Last.fm blog that Last.fm will charge users — except for those in the United States, United Kingdom, or Germany — a subscription fee of €3.00 per month for use of Last.fm radio.

The free user account includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to post in the Last.fm forums, send and receive private messages and use the Last.fm client music player.

Once an artist has had a track or tracks "scrobbled" by at least one user, Last.fm automatically generates a main artist page, even if there is no music available for streaming on the radio. This page shows details of the total number of plays, the total number of listeners, the most popular weekly and overall tracks, the top weekly listeners, linked groups and journals, a list of similar artists, most popular tags and a shoutbox for messages. There are also links to events, additional album and individual track pages and similar artists radio. If the artist has music available for streaming or download an embedded flash player is also included with samples of the most popular tracks.

Official music videos and other videos imported from YouTube may also be viewed on the relevant artist and track pages.

Users may add relevant biographical details and other information to any artist's main page in the form of a Wiki. Edits are regularly moderated to prevent vandalism. A photograph of the artist may also be added. If more than one is submitted, the most popular is chosen by public vote. User submitted content is licensed for use under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Last.fm currently cannot disambiguate artists with the same name; a single artist profile is shared between valid artists with the same name.

Last.fm's music library contains well over 3.5 million individual audio tracks from artists on all the major commercial labels. Users are not allowed to upload copyrighted audio files but commercially available albums are regularly added by Last.fm staff. Most currently popular and other well known artists have tracks available for streaming, although there are significant gaps in coverage and the most recent releases are not always added immediately. The music catalogue includes a wide variety of genres including classical, opera and musicals, as well as many little known and specialist recordings which are no longer generally available.

In February 2007 Warner Music, the world's third-largest music company, announced that it had signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played on Last.fm. Warner's music would be made available over Last.fm's service in Europe and North America. The site's co-founder, Martin Stiksel, said they were also in talks with the other three major labels and content holders. However in June 2008 Warner cancelled its deal with last.fm and removed all Warner artists from the site's on demand streaming catalogue, Warner have indicated that they are in disagreement over the financial compensation offered by last.fm.

On 9 July 2007, it was announced that Last.fm had also signed a deal with the Sony BMG record label. The partnership will give the service's users access to the entire Sony BMG catalogue of music.

Independent record labels and unsigned artists are encouraged to promote their music on Last.fm, because the filtering and recommendation features mean that the music will be played for users who already like similar artists. Labels and artists can upload their own music for streaming and Last.fm provides access to weekly airplay statistics, with facilities for promoting individual artists or tracks. Labels and artists may choose whether their music is to be made available for streaming only, or for purchase or free download.

30-second previews of any of the stream-able tracks are available on demand, from anywhere in the site, by clicking on the grey arrow next to the name of the track or artist. Some tracks are also available to preview in full if the label or artist has specifically authorized it; these are indicated by black arrows. (All tracks are played in full when users listen to appropriate stations).

In October 2006, Last.fm brought back its free download service which allowed users to download select tracks as specified by the artist or the label. The service only includes tracks on "indie" labels or by bands who upload their own material, although some artists who have since moved onto a major label (such as Coheed and Cambria and My Chemical Romance) have kept their free songs available for download. More than 100,000 songs are currently downloadable, and there is a separate free download chart, updated weekly, showing the 200 most popular tracks.

On 23 January 2008, Last.fm changed its business model with the Free the Music initiative. Most tracks and albums can be streamed from the website free of charge up to three times. The artists are paid each time the track is played. This service is still in beta mode and free on demand listening is currently only available to users in the US, UK and Germany.

With the August 2005 relaunch, Last.fm supports user-end tagging or labelling of artists, albums, and tracks to create a site-wide folksonomy of music. Users can browse via tags, but the most important benefit is tag radio, permitting users to play music that has been tagged a certain way. This tagging can be by genre ("garage rock"), mood ("chill"), artist characteristic ("baritone"), or any other form of user-defined classification ("seen live"). However, since tagging is not moderated, it is prone to manipulation by the site's users, most often resulting in genre disagreements among users or pushing certain artists higher up on certain tag charts.

Subscribers are also able to create personal tag radio stations containing only tracks and artists that they have tagged themselves. All tag radio stations (including subscriber's personal tag stations) can be played by anybody, including non-subscribers.

One particular feature of Last.fm is the automatic weekly generation and archiving of detailed personal music charts and statistics which are created as part of its profile building. Users have several different charts available, including Top Artists, Top Tracks, and Top Albums, as well as Weekly Top Artists and Weekly Top Tracks. Each of these charts is based on the actual number of people listening to the track, album or artist recorded either through an Audioscrobbler plugin or the Last.fm radio stream.

Additionally, charts are available for the top tracks by each artist in the Last.fm system as well as the top tracks for individual albums (when the tagging information of the audio file is available). Artist profiles also keep track of a short list of Top Fans, which is calculated by a formula meant to portray the importance of an artist in a fan's own profile, balancing out users who play hundreds of tracks overall versus those who play only a few.

As the information generated is largely compiled from the ID3 data from audio files "scrobbled" from user's own computers, and which may be incorrect or misspelled, there are many errors in the listings. Tracks with ambiguous punctuation are especially prone to separate listings, which can dilute the apparent popularity of a track. Artists or bands with the same name are not always differentiated. The system does attempt to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, but does not attempt to harmonise track names.

Charts are also available for user groups, thus providing a view into a demographic slice, and can reveal interesting new music based on the preferences of similar users.

The Last.fm artist charts currently do not take track length into consideration. For example, an album with 22 short tracks will boost that artist's popularity for a particular user's rankings much more than an album with only five long tracks, even though the user spent the same amount of time listening to each. The impact of this problem is limited to personal charts. All other charts are calculated using reach, that is, the number of users who play a certain artist or track, rather than the total number of plays. This is also a defence against users who in the early days of Audioscrobbler submitted spam data in order to boost the rankings of a particular artist or song or their own ranking as a fan.

Last.fm generates weekly "global" charts of the top 400 artists and tracks listened to by all Last.fm users. To prevent the artificial boosting of an artist or song by deliberately repeated tracks from a single listener, these charts are based on the total number of individual listeners (the reach) and not the number of actual plays.

The result is notably different from traditional commercial music charts provided by the UK Top 40, Billboard magazine, Soundscan and others, which are based on radio plays or sales. Last.fm charts are less volatile and a new album's release may be reflected in play data for many months or years after it drops out of commercial charts. For example, The Beatles have consistently been a top 5 band at Last.fm, reflecting the continued popularity of the band's music irrespective of current album sales.

The Global Tag Chart shows the 100 most popular tags that have been used to describe artists, albums, and tracks. This is based on the total number of times the tag has been applied by Last.fm users since the tagging system was first introduced and does not necessarily reflect the number of users currently listening to any of the related "global tag radio" stations.

Last.fm offers customised "radio stations" consisting of uninterrupted audio streams of individual tracks selected from the music files in the music library.

Stations can be based on the user's personal profile, the user's "musical neighbours", or the tracks that the user has marked as loved when listening to any station. Groups based around common interests or geography also have radio stations if there are enough members, and tags also have radio stations if enough music has the same tag. Radio stations can also be created on the fly, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station. (As of December 2006, it is no longer possible to create a "multiple artist" station i.e. a station based on music similar to that of more than one artist. Last.fm has cited copyright restrictions as the reason for this change.

Under the terms of the station's "radio" licence, listeners may not select specific tracks (except as previews), or choose the order in which they are played, although any of the tracks played may be skipped or banned completely. The appropriate royalties are paid to the copyright holders of all streamed audio tracks according to the law in the UK.

The radio stream uses an MP3 stream encoded at 128 kbit/s 44.1 kHz, which may be played using the in-page flash player or the downloaded Last.fm client, but other community-supported players are available as well as a proxy which allows using a media player of choice.

As part of a programme of improvements in February 2007, registered users are also able to export the Last.fm Flash player to embed into blogs, personal websites, Facebook or MySpace pages.

The 24th March 2009, Last.fm announced that Last.fm Radio will require a subscription of €3.00 per month for users living outside the US, the UK and Germany. This change will take effect 30th March.

An "in-page" Flash-based player is provided automatically for all listeners; it is not necessary to download additional software in order to listen to any of the music available from the Last.fm music library. It is necessary, however, to download the Last.fm client if a user also wishes information about played tracks from their own digital music collection to be included in their personal music profile.

Prior to August 2005, Last.fm generated an open stream that could be played in the user's music player of choice, with a browser-based player control panel. This proved difficult to support and has been officially discontinued. The Last.fm client is currently the only officially supported music player for playing customised Last.fm radio streams. The current version combines the functions of the music player with the plugin that transmits all track data to the Last.fm server, and effectively replaces the separate Last.fm Player and the standalone track submission plugins. It is also free software licensed under the GNU General Public License and available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The player allows the user to enter the name of any artist or tag which then gives a choice of a number of similar artist stations, or similar global tag stations. Alternatively, Recommendation radio or any of the user's personal radio stations may be played without the necessity to visit the website.

The player displays the name of the station and track currently playing, the song artist, title and track length as well as album details, the artist's photo and biographical details, album cover art when available, lists of similar artists and the most popular tags and top fans. There are several buttons, allowing the user to love, skip, or ban a song. The love button adds the song to the user's loved tracks playlist; the ban button ensures that the song will not be played again. Both features affect the user's profile. The skip button does not. Other buttons allow the user to tag or recommend the currently playing track. Other features offered by the application are: minor editing of the user's profile including removing recently played artists and songs from the loved, banned, or previously played track lists; lists of friends and neighbours, lists of tags and a list of previously played radio stations. Users can also open their full Last.fm profile page directly from the player.

The client also enables the user to install player plugins, these integrate with various standalone media players to allow the submission of tracks played in those programs.

In the latest version of the Last.fm Player application, the user can select to use an external player. When this is done, the Last.fm Player provides the user with a local URL, through which the Last.fm music stream is proxied. Users can then open the URL in their preferred media player.

Last.fm can optionally build a profile directly from a user's music played on their personal computer. Users must download and install a plugin for their music player, which will automatically submit the artist and title of the song after either half the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in iTunes) or the track lacks metadata (ID3, CDDB, etc), the track is not submitted. To accommodate dial-up users, caching of the data and submitting it in bulk is also possible.

All Audioscrobbler plugins are open source and the listening data it collects is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. The data is available from Last.fm's Audioscrobbler site.

As of March 2008, the website has added a section titled "Build" where third party applications can be submitted for review, and then posted to the page.

Last.fm partnered up with the SXSW festival by creating an application embedded in the corresponding group page that filters the various artists at the festival by a user's listening statistics, and then uses Last.fm's recommendation service to also suggest other performing artists that said user hasn't listened to.

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Internet radio

Internet radio (also known as web radio, net radio, streaming radio and e-radio) is an audio broadcasting service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted broadly through wireless means. Internet radio involves a streaming medium that presents listeners with a continuous "stream" of audio over which they have no control, much like traditional broadcast media; in this respect, it is distinct from "on-demand" file serving. Internet radio is also distinct from podcasting, which involves downloading rather than streaming. Many Internet radio "stations" are associated with a corresponding traditional (or "terrestrial") radio station or radio network. Internet-only radio stations are independent of such associations.

Internet radio services are usually accessible from anywhere in the world—for example, one could listen to an Australian station from Europe or America. Some major networks like Clear Channel in the US and Chrysalis in the UK restrict listening to in country because of music licensing and advertising concerns. Internet radio remains popular among expatriates and listeners with interests that are often not adequately served by local radio stations (such as progressive rock, ambient music, folk music, classical music, and stand-up comedy). Internet radio services offer news, sports, talk, and various genres of music—every format that is available on traditional radio stations.

On November 7, 1994, WXYC (89.3 FM Chapel Hill, NC USA) became the first traditional radio station to announce broadcasting on the Internet. WXYC used an FM radio connected to a system at SunSite, later known as Ibiblio, running Cornell's CU-SeeMe software. WXYC had begun test broadcasts and bandwidth testing as early as August, 1994. WREK (91.1 FM, Atlanta, GA USA) started streaming on the same day using their own custom software called CyberRadio1. However, unlike WXYC, this was WREK's beta launch and the stream was not advertised until a later date.

In March 1996, Virgin Radio - London, became the first European radio station to broadcast its full program live on the internet. It broadcast its FM signal, live from the source, simultaneously on the internet 24 hours a day.

Internet radio attracted significant media and investor attention in the late 1990s. In 1998, the initial public stock offering for Broadcast.com set a record at the time for the largest jump in price in stock offerings in the United States. The offering price was US$18 and the company's shares opened at US$68 on the first day of trading. The company was losing money at the time and indicated in a prospectus filed with the Securities Exchange Commission that they expected the losses to continue indefinitely. Yahoo! purchased Broadcast.com on July 20, 1999 for US$5.7 billion.

In October 1998, the US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). One result of the DMCA is that performance royalties are to be paid for satellite radio and Internet radio broadcasts in addition to publishing royalties. In contrast, traditional radio broadcasters pay only publishing royalties and no performance royalties.

A rancorous dispute ensued over how performance royalties should be assessed for Internet broadcasters. Some observers said that royalty rates that were being proposed were overly burdensome and intended to disadvantage independent Internet-only stations—that "while Internet giants like AOL may be able to afford the new rates, many smaller Internet radio stations will have to shut down." The Digital Media Association (DiMA) said that even large companies, like Yahoo! Music, might fail due to the proposed rates. Some observers said that some U.S.-based Internet broadcasts might be moved to foreign jurisdictions where US royalties do not apply.

Many of these critics organized SaveNetRadio.org, "a coalition of listeners, artists, labels and webcasters" that opposed the proposed royalty rates. To focus attention on the consequences of the impending rate hike, many US Internet broadcasters participated in a "Day of Silence" on June 26, 2007. On that day, they shut off their audio streams or streamed ambient sound, sometimes interspersed with brief public service announcements. Notable participants included Rhapsody, Live365, MTV, Pandora, and SHOUTcast. Some others that did not participate, like Last.fm, stated that they did not want to punish their listeners for the station's problems.

SoundExchange, representing supporters of the increase in royalty rates, pointed out the fact that the rates were flat from 1998 through 2005 (see above), without even being increased to reflect cost-of-living increases. They also point to the fact that CBS recently purchased Last.FM for 280 million dollars, and if internet radio is to build businesses from the product of recordings, the performers and owners of those recordings should receive fair compensation. Opponents argued that the purchase price paid for Last.FM reflected that it was primarily a social network service that included a radio service.

On May 1, 2007, SoundExchange came to an agreement with certain large webcasters regarding the minimum fees that were modified by the determination of the Copyright Royalty Board. While the CRB decision imposed a $500 per station or channel minimum fee for all webcasters, certain webcasters represented through DiMA negotiated a $50,000 "cap" on those fees with SoundExchange. However, DiMA and SoundExchange continue to negotiate over the per song, per listener fees.

SoundExchange has also offered alternative rates and terms to certain eligible small webcasters, that allows them to calculate their royalties as a percentage of their revenue or expenses, instead of at a per performance rate. To be eligible, a webcaster had to have revenues of less than $1.25 million dollars a year and stream less than 5 million "listener hours" a month (or an average of 6830 concurrent listeners). These restrictions would disqualify independent webcasters like AccuRadio, DI.FM, Club977 and others from participating in the offer, and therefore many small commercial webcasters continue to negotiate a settlement with SoundExchange.

An August 16, 2008 Washington Post article reported that although Pandora was "one of the nation's most popular Web radio services, with about 1 million listeners daily...the burgeoning company may be on the verge of collapse" due to the structuring of performance royalty payment for webcasters. "Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures." The article indicated that "other Web radio outfits" may be "doom" for the same reasons.

On September 30, 2008, the United States Congress passed "a bill that would put into effect any changes to the royalty rate to which agree while lawmakers are out of session." Although royalty rates are expected to decrease, many webcasters nevertheless predict difficulties generating sufficient revenue to cover their royalty payments.

In 2003, revenue from "online streaming music radio" was US$49 million. By 2006, that figure rose to US$500 million.

An April 2008 survey showed that, in the US, more than one in seven persons aged 25-54 years old listen to online radio each week. In 2008, 13 percent of the American population listened to the radio online, compared with 11 percent in 2007.

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Slacker (music service)

Slacker is a US only interactive Internet radio service. It allows users to create their own customized music stations starting with either Slacker's presets or a list of one or more artists. Slacker offers many traditional genre, specialty, and artist stations pre-programmed by professional DJs while also letting users build entire stations of specific artists. Slacker users can continue to evolve any of these stations by rating favorite songs and banning artists or songs. Stations can also be fine tuned to play older or newer music, more hits or more eclectic music. In January 2008, Slacker reported that the service had over 2 million songs, organized into over 100 professionally programmed stations, 10,000 artist stations, and an unlimited number of personally created stations .

Users can also create their own customizable radio stations and share them with anyone. The Slacker radio service is available to all Flash-enabled web browsers, and is also available in a downloadable application for computers running Windows XP SP2 or higher .

Slacker offers the experience "to go" with a portable device, the Slacker Portable Player The Player refreshes users' customized Slacker channels over available Wi-Fi connections (WEP and WPA wireless security supported) and stores those stations in the device library so that users do not need to be connected to WiFi to listen to Slacker .

Slacker was founded in 2004.

March 15, 2007 - Slacker, Inc. is launched. The company is headed by Dennis Mudd, CEO. Mr. Mudd is the former CEO of MusicMatch, which was purchased by Yahoo Music and is now known as LAUNCHcast. Other notable executives include the president Jim Cady, former CEO of Rio, and vice president of marketing Jonathan Sasse, former president of iriver America.

September 20, 2007 - Slacker finalizes its deals with 4 Major labels; SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, EMI, Universal, and Warner. Slacker also announced deals with thousands of Indie labels including Beggars Group, Matador Records, IRIS, Ubiquity and Sanctuary Group as well as indie aggregators IODA, IRIS, and The Orchard, which gives listeners access to millions of songs.

November 15, 2007 - Slacker begins taking pre-orders for their portable music players, to be shipped January 31, 2008 . The first generation players are available in 3 capacities: 15 stations (2GB), 25 stations (4GB), and 40 stations (8GB). The portable players can be updated from a computer via USB or WiFi.

January 9, 2008 - Slacker receives Laptop Magazine's Best of CES Portable Audio/Video Player Award for the not yet released Slacker Portable Player. .

January 31, 2008 - The Slacker Portable Radio Player begins shipping.

April 2, 2008 - Slacker announces its partnership with Devicescape, allowing Slacker to integrate Devicescape Connect into its Portable Players.

April 8, 2008 - Slacker announces agreements with top music publishers, including EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner/Chappell Music. The agreements, signed before the Slacker Portable Player launched, allow Portable Player users to listen to cached Internet radio stations and allow premium radio users to save songs for later playback.

September 16, 2008 - Slacker announces the availability of the Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player, the next generation of the world’s only completely portable Personal Radio player.

November 19, 2008 – Sony introduced Slacker Personal Radio as the latest Sony® BRAVIA® Internet Video Link content provider. Slacker’s library of CD-quality music across all genres and eras ensures that music lovers can enjoy radio stations on their BRAVIA HDTV ranging from music of the golden-era classics to today’s hottest hits. By simply linking their BRAVIA Internet Video Link to your online Slacker account, users can easily enjoy their own custom Slacker stations created online where they have fine-tuned categories to set artist, year, popularity and more.

December 19, 2008 - Slacker announces the availability of Slacker Radio Plus. This service provides unlimited skips, unlimited request and no ads. This is essentially the Premium Service minus the ability to save songs to your Slacker Library. The cost of Slacker Radio Plus is $3.99/month (billed as $47.88 annually).

January 8, 2009 – Slacker, Inc. announces the availability of the free Slacker Mobile application for BlackBerry® smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM). BlackBerry smartphone users* can now hear their favorite Slacker radio stations wherever they go, whether they are connected to a wireless network or not – a Slacker Mobile feature exclusive to BlackBerry smartphones. The application, which is compatible with BlackBerry® Device Software version 4.3 and higher is available as a free download by visiting Slacker.com from your BlackBerry smartphone.

January 14, 2009 - Slacker, Inc. announces the availability of the free Slacker Mobile application for iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod touch at the Apple iTunes App Store. The free application is available immediately by visiting www.Slacker.com from your iPhone.

January 22, 2009 - Slacker, Inc. releases new features and visual enhancements to their web interface at Slacker.com. Additions include a streamlined visual interface with one-click access to artist bios and album reviews, new station creation options, as well as a “Buy Now” feature to purchase favorite tracks.

The free Slacker Basic Radio user account allows registered users to have free access to all of the features below.

Users who log onto Slacker can begin listening to music from more than 100 professionally programmed and 10,000 artist-specific stations. When a user inputs the name of a specific band or artist Slacker will instantly create a station based on that musician along with similar artists. This feature allows users to discover new artists similar to the ones they already like. Users can also create their own stations by inputting artists they want and letting Slacker and Slacker's professional DJs fill out the rest of the station with similar songs and artists. If a user adds 15 or more artists into a selected personal station, Slacker will not add additional artists and only songs from the specifically chosen bands will play on that station. All of the genre, artist and user created stations are completely customizable.

When a user is listening to a station and a song appears that they don't like, they can press the 'ban' button on the Web Player. If a user bans a song it will never be played for them again on that particular station. Users also have the option of banning an artist from a single station. If a user hears a song that they love and want to hear more often, they can press the 'heart' button and it will be marked by Slacker as a favorite. The station will play that song more often. The more a user utilizes the heart and ban options, the more Slacker can define that individual's musical tastes to their stations.

In addition to its free, ad-supported service, Slacker offers two levels of subscription services.

Slacker offers a downloadable version of its web-based player to its Windows XP + SP2 and Vista users. The Slacker Software Player supports AAC Pro v2 music compression technology for slower broadband connections, allowing users with a slow broadband connection to listen to CD quality streaming without buffering delays.

The Slacker Software Player can be expanded to fill a user's entire PC screen or minimized to "mini-mode". The Software Player can display hi-res album art as large as a monitor, Artists biographies and album reviews can also be maximized for easier viewing.

Users can also use the Software Player can to manage and listen to their own personal MP3s in the player's library. Premium Radio subscribers' favorite Slacker songs are also stored in the library and can be mixed with a user's personal songs. All of the songs and playlists created with the Software Player can be sent to the Slacker Portable Player over WiFi or USB.

On September 18th 2008 it was officially announced through the Slacker forums that the software player has been discontinued and that no further development will be taking place.

On September 16th, 2008 Slacker released a new portable player called Slacker G2. When located in a WiFi hot spot or connected to a PC, Slacker’s radio delivery network offers the ability to download and refresh selected songs on the device and turn them into "personalized radio stations." The players do not have to be connected to WiFi for playback. The Slacker G2 ships with earphones, a USB cable, power adapter, carrying case with removable sport clip and a quick start guide.

Devicescape Connect is a feature that was added to the Slacker Portable Players to allow users to access WiFi-hotspots that would normally require a web-based login, something that the Slacker Portable could not previously access because of its lack of a web-based browser. Increased WiFi access allows Slacker users to refresh their stations at more locations.

On March 15, 2007 Slacker announced the development of the Slacker Portable Player (the G1), allowing U.S. consumers to listen to Slacker Radio stations on a digital audio device. On January 31, 2008 the Slacker Portable Player began shipping. The Slacker Portable automatically connects to Slacker's music library over WiFi when in wireless range, or over USB when attached to an Internet connected PC. Instead of live streaming of songs, the Slacker Portable fills itself up with a user's personalized music choices each time the Player is refreshed . Entire new stations can be added to Slacker Portable from any Windows or Mac computer with an Internet connection. Because the Player caches its songs users can listen to their stations whether or not they are within WiFi-range. The device is rated at a battery life of 15 hours, but real world tests reveal it to only allow up to 9 hours of usage.

On August 29, 2007 Slacker released its first social networking MySpace "widget". The MySpace player is a single station Flash player which looks very similar to their full blown web player. The widget has volume, play, pause, skip and album art. Being a flash object this player can be embedded just about anywhere and not just on MySpace.

The Slacker application has an unofficial hack available from LastSlacker that tracks the songs played on the Slacker player and reports them to Last.fm. Essentially this enables the Last.fm Audioscrobbler in Slacker. Users with both a Slacker and a Last.fm account can build a library of cataloged songs in Last.fm profile that reflect both services.

Alternatively, the LastFM Firefox Extension automatically "scrobbles" songs heard on Slacker to a user's account on Last.fm. Also works with Pandora.

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MySpace

MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City. In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. The company employs 300 staff and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006 in the Netherlands and the site counted approximately 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006.

After the 2002 launch of Friendster, several eUniverse employees with Friendster accounts saw its potential and decided to mimic the more popular features of the social networking website, in August 2003. Within 10 days, the first version of MySpace was ready for launch. A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity was available for the site, right out of the gate, so the MySpace team wasn’t distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.

The very first MySpace users were eUniverse employees. The company held contests to see who could sign-up the most users. The company then used its resources to push MySpace to the masses. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to quickly breathe life into MySpace, and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites. A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen who helped stabilize the MySpace platform when Brad Greenspan asked him to join the team.

The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc. It was intended to be a leading online data storage and sharing site up until 2002. By 2004, MySpace and MySpace.com, which existed as a brand associated with YourZ.com, had made the transition from a virtual storage site to a social networking site. This is the natural connection to Chris DeWolfe and a friend, who reminded him he had earlier bought the URL domain, MySpace.com, intending it to be used as a web hosting site, since both worked at one time in the virtual data storage business, which itself was a casualty of the "dot bomb" era.

Shortly after launching the site, team member Chris DeWolfe suggested that they start charging a fee for the basic MySpace service. Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping MySpace free and open was necessary to make it a large and successful community.

Some employees of MySpace including DeWolfe and Berman were later able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace, and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed Intermix Media) was bought in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises). Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of MySpace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion.

In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene" which they have since done. They also released a version in China and will possibly launch similar versions in other countries.

The corporate history of MySpace as well as the status of Tom Anderson as a MySpace founder has been a matter of some public dispute.

Throughout the course of 2007 and 2008, MySpace redesigned many of the features of its site in both layout and in function. One of the first functions to be redesigned was the user home page, and new features such as status updates, applications, and subscriptions were added to catch up with Facebook's cutting-edge elements. In 2008, the MySpace homepage was redesigned with a simpler and friendlier layout that is more aesthetically pleasing. MySpace Music was recreated in fall of 2008 along with an updated version of the MySpace profile. More updates might take places in 2009 to create a completely upgraded MySpace.com for the next decade.

MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user. Through its Web site and affiliated ad networks, MySpace is second only to Yahoo! in its capacity to collect data about its users and thus in its ability to use behavioral targeting to select the ads each visitor sees.

On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace. MySpace has proven to be a windfall for many smaller companies that provide widgets or accessories to the social networking giant. Companies such as Slide.com, RockYou!, and YouTube were all launched on MySpace as widgets providing additional functionality to the site. Other sites created layouts to personalize the site and made hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owners most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties.

In November 2008, MySpace announced that user-uploaded content that infringed on copyrights held by MTV and its subsidiary networks would be redistributed with advertisements that would generate revenue for the companies.

Moods are small emoticons that are used to depict a mood the user is in. The feature was added in July 2007.

Profiles contain two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. In the "Details" section, "Status" and "Zodiac Sign" fields will always display. However, fields in these sections will not be displayed if members do not fill them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. MySpace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image", the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded. Blogging features have been the main part of MySpace.

MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me," "I'd Like to Meet," and "Interests." Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on MySpace.

A user can also change the general appearance of his or her page by entering CSS (in a <style> ... </style> element) into one of these fields to override the page's default style sheet using MySpace editors. This is often used to tweak fonts and colors. The fact that the user-added CSS is located in the middle of the page (rather than being located in the <head> element) means that the page will begin to load with the default MySpace layout before abruptly changing to the custom layout. A special type of modification is a div overlay, where the default layout is dramatically changed by hiding default text with <div> tags and large images.

There are several independent web sites offering MySpace layout design utilities which let a user select options and preview what their page will look like with them.

MySpace has recently added its own "Profile Customizer" to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. Using this feature bypasses the CSS loading delay issue, as the MySpace default code is changed for the customized profile. The MySpace profile editor also has a criticism with how the links appear on the profile.

MySpace profiles for musicians in the website's MySpace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload their entire discographies consisting of MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g. their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users.

Shortly after MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox news and 20th Century Fox, in 2005 they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on MySpace Music. Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, aspiring artists can upload their songs onto MySpace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lily Allen and Sean Kingston gained fame through MySpace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by MySpace and many more continue to be discovered daily.

MySpace has recently redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. These new features include the users' ability to create playlists, resembling the functions of Last.fm and other social music websites, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes and Napster.

In late 2007, the site launched The MySpace Transmissions, a series of live-in-studio recordings by well-known artists.

Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Bulletins as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else and sometimes these chain messages are considered threatening to the users, especially the ones that mention bad luck, death, or topics similar to that. They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.

MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.

In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.

In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing website. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009. MySpaceTV might be a standard channel that will be shown on television.

In 2008, MySpace introduced an API with which users could create applications for other users to post on their profiles. The applications are similar to the Facebook applications. In May 2008, MySpace had added some security options regarding interaction with photos and other media.

There are a variety of environments in which users can access MySpace content on their mobile phone. American mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones in early 2006 that can utilize a service known as MySpace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with, and view the profiles of, other members. Additionally, UIEvolution and MySpace developed a mobile version of MySpace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T, Vodafone and Rogers Wireless.

In the month of April 2007, MySpace launched a news service called MySpace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.

Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. Has grown by 33 percent in one year since inception. MySpace Classifieds was launched right at the same time the site appeared on the internet.

Launched April 29, 2008, ksolo.myspace.com is a combination of MySpace and kSolo, which allows users to upload audio recordings of themselves singing onto their profile page. Users' friends are able to rate the performances. A video feature is not yet available, but Tom Anderson, MySpace co-founder and president, states that it is in the works.

MySpace Polls is a feature on MySpace that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.

MySpace uses an implementation of community server for its forum system.

Because most MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, a very large proportion of pages do not satisfy the criteria for valid HTML or CSS laid down by the W3C. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen readers. The MySpace home page, as of August 18, 2008, fails HTML validation with around 125 errors (the number changes on sequential validations of the home page due to dynamic content), using the W3C's validator.

Furthermore, MySpace is set up so that anyone can customize the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions, provided that the advertisements are not covered up by CSS or using other means. As MySpace users are usually not skilled web developers, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash in their profiles (sometimes multiple videos and sound files are automatically played at the same time when a profile loads). While MySpace blocks potentially harmful code (such as JavaScript) from profiles, users have occasionally found ways to insert such code. PC World cited this as its main reason for naming MySpace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.

In addition, new features have been gradually added (see featuritis). This, and the increasing number of MySpace members, leads to an increase in bandwidth used.

In October 2005, a flaw in MySpace's site design was exploited by "Samy" to create the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC has reported that "social-networking sites like MySpace are turning out to be hotbeds for spyware," with "infection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com." In addition to this, the customization of user pages currently allows the injection of certain HTML which can be crafted to form a phishing user profile, thus keeping the myspace.com domain as the address. More recently, there has been spam on bulletins that has been the result of phishing. Users find their MySpace homepage with bulletins they didn't post, realizing later they had been phished. The bulletin consists of an advertisement that provides a link to a fake login screen, tricking people into typing in their MySpace e-mail and password.

Other security fears regarding profile content itself are also present. For example, the embedding of videos inherently allows all of the format's abilities and functions to be used on a page. A prime example of this surfaced in December 2006, when embedded QuickTime videos were shown to contain hyperlinks to JavaScript files, which would be run simply by a user visiting a 'phished' profile page, or even in some cases by simply viewing a user's 'about me' elsewhere on the site. Users who entered their login information into a fake login bar that appeared would also become 'phished', and their account would be used to spam other members, thus spreading this security problem.

In January 2008 the states attorneys general of 49 states of the USA wrote guidelines for online safety for MySpace and other services. They included restrictions for behavior on social networking services.

On January 26, 2008, over 567,000 private MySpace user pictures were downloaded from the site by using a bug published on YouTube and put on the Piratebay torrent site for download.

MySpace is often used as a venue for publicizing parties, sometimes with the host's knowledge and sometimes without. There have been some well-publicized incidents where MySpace parties have caused thousands of dollars damage to property, and even (in at least one case) loss of life.

The minimum age to register an account on MySpace is 13 or 14. Profiles with ages set from 14 to 15 years are automatically private. Users whose ages are set at 16 or over have the option to set their profile to public viewing. Accessing the full profile of, or messaging someone when their account is set to "private" (or if under sixteen) is restricted to a MySpace user's direct friends.

MySpace will delete fake profiles if the victim verifies their identity and points out the profile via e-mail.

Recently, MySpace has been the focus of a number of news reports stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by MySpace, and have been the target of online predators. Stricter methods for enforcing age admission will be enforced in the future, such as blocking a person from accessing MySpace using a computer's IP address. In response, MySpace has given assurances to parents that the website is safe for people of all ages. Beginning in late June 2006, MySpace users whose ages are set over 18 could no longer be able to add users whose ages are set from 14 to 15 years as friends unless they already know the user's full name or email address. Some third party Internet safety companies like Social Shield have launched online communities for parents concerned about their child's safety on MySpace.

In June 2006, 16-year-old American Katherine Lester flew to the Middle East, to Tel Aviv, Israel, after having tricked her parents into getting her a passport in order to be with a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace. U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.

In October 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after being the victim of cyber-bullying instigated by the mother of a friend who had posed as a 16-year old named "Josh Evans".

In December 2006, MySpace announced new measures to protect children from known sex offenders. Although precise details were not given they said that "tools" would be implemented to prevent known sex offenders from the USA creating a MySpace profile.

In July 2007, the company found and deleted 29,000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders. Anti-pedophile organization Perverted Justice has praised MySpace for its efforts to combat pedophiles using their service.

In October 2007, a study published in the Journal of Adolescence conducted by Sameer Hinduja (Florida Atlantic University) and Justin W. Patchin (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) concluded that most adolescents use MySpace responsibly: "When considered in its proper context, these results indicate that the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and that the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the website," they say.

Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 Playboy magazine, related his experiences of experimentation with membership in MySpace. Among his other criticisms, one pertains to the distance afforded by the Internet that emboldens members, such as females who feature photos of themselves in scant clothing on their profile pages or behave in ways they would not in person, and he indicated that this duplicity undercuts the central design of MySpace, namely, to bring people together. Itzkoff also referenced the addictive, time-consuming nature of the site, mentioning that the Playboy Playmate and MySpace member Julie McCullough, who was the first to respond to his add-friend request, pointedly referred to the site as "cybercrack". Itzkoff argued that MySpace gives many people access to a member’s life, without giving the time needed to maintain such relationships and that such relationships do not possess the depth of in-person relationships.

Furthermore, in terms of MySpace's potential for underhanded commercial exploitation, Itzkoff is particularly critical of the disturbing and fraudulent behavior of people who can contact a member, unsolicited, as when he was contacted by someone expressing a desire to socialize and date, but whose blog (to which Itzkoff was directed via subsequent emails) was found to be a solicitation for a series of commercial porn sites. Itzkoff is similarly critical of the more subtle commercial solicitations on the site, such as the banner ads and links to profiles and video clips that turn out to be, for example, commercials for new 20th Century Fox films. He also observed that MySpace’s much-celebrated music section is heavily weighted in favor of record labels rather than breakthrough musicians.

After the sale of MySpace to News Corp, Brad Greenspan (the former Chairman, CEO and largest individual shareholder of Intermix Media, who claims to be the true "founder of MySpace"), claimed that MySpace was a product developed by spyware and spam company eUniverse aimed at overtaking Friendster. Greenspan and Valleywag, a gossip blog that reported on the allegations of him and others, also claimed that founder and public face of MySpace, Tom Anderson, was a public relations invention. Newsweek confirmed reports that Anderson's age on the site had been lowered to "appeal" to younger users.

In October 2006, Greenspan published "The MySpace Report" on a personal website, calling for government investigation into News Corp's acquisition of MySpace. Greenspan's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued MySpace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process. However the report was not widely accepted by the financial press and a lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.

Activist group MoveOn.org has criticized MySpace, claiming that the website practices censorship by not showing anti-media ads, removing fake profiles for high-profile media executives like Rupert Murdoch, and allegedly attempting to force users away from using third-party Flash applications on their profiles. MySpace also generated controversy for censoring YouTube videos.

According to Alison Kiss, program director for Security on Campus, social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook have made it easier for stalkers who target women on college campuses.

On January 30, 2008, Bryan J. Pesta, a Cleveland State University assistant professor, and moderator of the Atheist and Agnostic Group, accused MySpace of pandering to religious intolerance by deleting atheist users, groups and content. Specifically, Pesta alleges that MySpace deleted AAG's account, and his own personal profile, based on complaints from people offended by atheism, and this was the second time MySpace deleted the group since November 2007, even though, according to Pesta, it had never violated the site's Terms of Service. The page was again hacked on Thanksgiving 2007, and restored three weeks later, before being ultimately removed again.

Since early 2006, MySpace has offered the option to access the service in different regional versions. The alternative regional versions present automated content according to locality (e.g. UK users see other UK users as "Cool New People," and UK oriented events and adverts, etc.), offer local languages other than English, or accommodate the regional differences in spelling and conventions in the English-speaking world (e.g. United States: "favorites," mm/dd/yyyy; the rest of the world: "favourites," dd/mm/yyyy).

On February 5, 2008, MySpace set up a developer platform which allows developers to share their ideas and write their own MySpace applications. The opening was inaugurated with a workshop at the MySpace, San Francisco offices two weeks before the official launch. The MDP is based on the Open Social API which was presented by Google in November 2007 to support social networks to develop social and interacting widgets and can be seen as an answer to Facebooks developer platform. The first public beta of the MySpace Apps was released on March 5, 2008, with around 1,000 applications available.

A Catholic school in New Jersey has even prohibited students from using MySpace at home, an action made to protect students from online predators as claimed by the school, although experts questioned the legality of such a ban. In Autumn of 2005 Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta Township, New Jersey made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on MySpace or similar websites (such as Gaia) under threat of suspension or expulsion.

Although schools, businesses, and some public libraries try to prevent the use of MySpace, they are not always successful; students have been known to use web proxies and downloadable software, along with "fake browsers" in order to log in to the site.

In May 2006, Long Island, New York teenagers Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli were charged with illegal computer access and attempted extortion of MySpace, after both had allegedly hacked into the site to steal the personal information of MySpace users before threatening to share the secrets of how they broke into the website unless MySpace paid them $150,000. Both teens were arrested by undercover Los Angeles police detectives posing as MySpace employees.

In April 2007, police in County Durham, United Kingdom, arrested a 17-year-old girl on charges of criminal damage following a party advertised on MySpace, held at her parents' house without their consent. Over 200 teenagers came to the party from across the country, causing £20,000 of damage, such as cigarette butts, urine on clothing, and writing on the walls. The girl's parents, who were away at the time, had to move out of the house.

YouTube first appeared on the web in early 2005, and it quickly gained popularity on MySpace due to MySpace users' ability to embed YouTube videos in their MySpace profiles. Realizing the competitive threat to the new MySpace Videos service, MySpace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. MySpace users widely protested the ban, prompting MySpace to lift the ban shortly thereafter.

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