Myspace Relaunch: A Second Chance for Creators?

Myspace wants another shot at the internet. Yes, that Myspace. The glitter backgrounds, profile songs and friendship-ending Top 8.

Fun? Absolutely. A new distribution channel? Easy there, cowboy.

The comeback, sort of

Owners Tim and Chris Vanderhook say they intend to relaunch Myspace. The announcement appears in Tommy Avallone's Myspace documentary¹, which screened at Hot Docs this year.

What's missing matters more: there's no launch date, product demo or explanation of what "relaunch" means. It could be a rebuilt social network. It could be a music community. It could be three developers, a logo and Tom's old profile picture.

The brothers bought Myspace through Specific Media in 2011 for roughly $35 million, with Justin Timberlake involved. Their 2013 rebuild leaned heavily into music discovery. It attracted early curiosity, but advertisers and users had already moved on. The Vanderhooks say that attempt lost more than $150 million.

Viant still lists Myspace-related intellectual property among its assets in a recent SEC filing². So this isn't somebody dusting off an expired domain. The owners are real. The product, so far, isn't.

Nostalgia gets the click. Habit gets the user back tomorrow. Don't confuse the two.

The creator angle

Old Myspace did something today's feeds often forget: it made the creator's page feel like theirs. Musicians could publish songs, dates, posts and personality in one place. Fans visited intentionally instead of being tossed another clip by a recommendation machine.

That idea still has teeth. Creators are tired of renting attention from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube while praying the feed remembers they exist. The reaction around this comeback reflects that frustration: people want chronological posts, customizable profiles and stronger music discovery.

But Myspace carries baggage. Its 2013 overhaul disrupted old blogs and artist communities. Then a botched server migration wiped out years of uploaded music, photos and videos - an estimated 50 million tracks among them. That wasn't merely embarrassing³. For creators, it was a lesson in why platforms are not archives.

Don't move house

Keep building where your audience already is. No farewell videos. No dramatic "I'm leaving Instagram" post. Myspace hasn't earned that kind of trust yet.

Watch for mechanics, not branding. Before uploading anything, check who owns your files, whether followers are portable, how discovery works and whether creators can actually make money.

Back up everything. Your videos, music, captions, audience emails. All of it. The previous data loss should make this non-negotiable.

If sign-ups open, grab your name and experiment cheaply. One afternoon. A recycled post. Maybe a profile song if they let us have nice things again.

Let Myspace prove it can stay alive before you ask it to help fund yours.