Alex Reid

Apple’s attempt at a social network is officially dead.

Launched in late 2010, Ping was described as a social network for music, within iTunes allowing users to share music with each other. Instead, iTunes will get a makeover later this month, including an iCloud integration to show an user’s media content saved in Apple’s cloud storage service.

Thought to be dead years ago, MySpace released a teaser of its refreshed look (video).

In 2005, Myspace was the most popular social networking site in the world. It was sold at that time to Rupert Murdoch’s company for $580 million, who later regretted the purchase. Last summer, musician Justin Timberlake and Specific Media purchased Myspace for $35 million.

So far the new site looks like Pinterest for musicians.

Despite the popularity, I was never a member of MySpace. Among many usability farts, I found the auto-play of music to be particularly annoying. Plus I wasn’t a musician. But now I might give it a chance. It looks slick and user friendly. I just hope it’s privacy friendly.

SoundCloud announced today that it has reached 10 million registered users. Last January, the music platform web site only had 3 million users.

To celebrate, SoundCloud co-founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss launched a new feature today called “Story Wheel,” which “allows anyone to record their own narrative around a series of images to tell a personal story.”

Check out their story wheel.

“Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” was the title of a column piece in the Chicago Tribune written by Mary Schmich in 1997.

In 1999, the essay became the basis of the 1999 hit music single “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”, by Baz Luhrmann.

I encourage you to give it a listen/watch here.

Today, after 12 years, the company that sparked a revolution in how we purchase music online, is no longer.

Rhapsody, the largest on-demand music service in the United States, bought its assets, intellectual property and subscribers last month from parent company Best Buy for an undisclosed sum and a minority stake.

The acquisition nearly doubles Rhapsody’s subscriber base. They had 800,000 subscribers in July 2011 and at the time of the purchase, Napster had 700,000 subscribers.

Napster started in 1999 and almost immediately were being sued for distributing music for copyright infringement. It took two years for the service to be shut down by court order, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Napster finally declared itself bankrupt in 2002 and sold its assets to German media firm Bertelsmann for $85 million. However an American bankruptcy judge blocked the sale and forced Napster to liquidate its assets, and it was sold to Roxio who in turn sold it to Best Buy in 2008 for $121 million.

Interestingly, when Napster was shut down, Rhapsody was started and will be celebrating their 10-year anniversary this Saturday (December 3rd). There’s also talk there might be a Napster documentary in play.