The ink is still drying on the massive, $850 million buyout of Bebo by AOL.
That means that integration details are largely unresolved, including those related to music. AOL Music is one of the largest stand-alone music portals, and it represents a very different animal than Bebo Music.
Bebo officially started in 2005, the year that MySpace was purchased by News Corp. That seems hard to believe, though the internet is now crowning champions overnight. Still, the compressed timeframe means that Bebo’s music strategy has developed more recently.
In the summer of 2006, the company opened dedicated band profile pages, and well-known names like Paramore, Rihanna, Dizzee Rascal, and 50 Cent are now among the most visited. In October of last year, the network reported a total of 700,000 profiles. Additionally, Bebo music fans can download the iLike application, which offers its own set of 200,000 profiles.
Bebo carries some regional advantages, particularly within Europe, though its ambitions appear global. On that broader stage, MySpace and Facebook are undoubtedly the two-ton heavyweights. MySpace boasts a band profile total that surpasses 8 million, and Facebook recently started its own band profile initiative.