MySpace itself sees driving premium advertising through its service by understanding users' interests and has signed major advertising deals with McDonald's, Toyota and State Farm Insurance.

"We see ourselves as a social port where we filter information based on what's of interest to you," MySpace COO Amit Kapur saidin an interview.

APPLE DOMINANCE

The music industry has become frustrated with the dominance of Apple in the music business through both iTunes and popular iPod music player.

Music executives have said the refusal of iTunes to agree to variable pricing, rather than pricing every song at 99 cents or selling all albums as individual songs, has harmed sales and their bottomline.

One executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the labels will try strategies such as giving exclusive album releases first to MySpace to help support the new service in which they now all have a vested interest in helping to succeed.

"MySpace Music gives fans a reason to buy music on somewhere other than iTunes," said the executive. "ITunes is a very static proposition and doesn't aid discovery of new music like a MySpace community."

Since its beginning, music has been one of the strongest attractions of MySpace, particularly for up and coming artists. In the last few years, major name artists have also taken to promoting their songs and albums through the site's artist pages.

But until the creation of MySpace Music, there had been few avenues for artists to sell their songs or other related music services.