(editor’s note - this is an expanded version of a comment on Techcrunch’s piece on Amazon powering MySpace Music’s backend).

With rumors swirling around the upcoming (September?) launch of MySpace’s music service, the real question is, will anyone care? As a digital distributor myself, I have yet to see evidence of high-traffic destinations actually generating sales of music downloads. Consumers seem to have a giant wall between their online entertainment and commerce destinations. A brief history:

Circa 2003/04 - PressPlay rebrands under Napster a formerly “free” consumption service. Today, Napster is the most frequently cited takeover target of digital music services.

Circa 2004 - AOL acquires MusicNow to offer download and subscriptions to the massive userbase of 20-25 MM/month music visitors. Today, Musicnow has been shuttered and Rhapsody powers the minimal revenue AOL receives from music.

Circa 2005 - Yahoo launches YMU, promising to turn traffic firehose and $6.99 price point into huge sea change for subscription business. Today, Yang can’t even afford to maintain the servers managing the DRM licenses. Another fun fact - our Yahoo revenue was the most disappointing of all - at about .00025% of iTunes for our clients.

Circa 2005/6 - MTV launches URGE. Crickets.

Today - contrast the above to retail focused sites launching services: Amazon has grown dramatically in first 9 months. Still a fraction of iTunes, but actually growing. Upstarts like AmieStreet demonstrate a real financial trend, and niche sites like Turntable Lab and Beatport servicing specialty markets with retail focus actually do business.

MySpace has yet to say anything about actual experience differentiators. You I can already stream music for free there, provided the browser doesn’t crash, and you remember to turn off the bands 15 other Reverbnation, Musicane, RockYou and NeverStopsFlashingForNoReason widgets.

A long comment, but final thoughts: with social advertising CPMs at rock bottom prices, there is little guarantee that MySpace is even demonstrating advertising value to companies to adequately cover even streaming costs of that much media.

DashGo’s statistics tracking monitors streams for bands on MySpace, Last.FM and YouTube among others. Once a band reaches a certain threshold - say around 1 million total streams, Last.fm and YouTube traffic tends to outpace MySpace, perhaps demonstrating that MySpace isn’t yet a compelling destination to consume music in the long run.

That’s the skeptic in me. But I hope they find a way to really deliver music to their users in a way that works great and is universally embraced. I hope we don’t see the Rhapsody powered MySpace music store in 15 months, as much as I like Rhapsody. Consumers need good options.