MySpace's DeWolfe Says New Music Joint Venture to Launch in September

MySpace's upcoming music joint venture with 3 of the 4 major labels, first announced in April, will launch in September (EMI is still a holdout, but from what we hear they may be ready to fold soon). Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, mentioned that date and gave other details about the joint venture in an interview today with Adam Lashinsky at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Half Moon Bay, CA.

Afterward, he told TechCrunch Co-Editor Erick Schonfeld, who is attending the event, that MySpace Music will be a combination music store/subscription service, with unlimited playbacks of full tracks, but for free. The revenue model will be advertising and paid downloads. Advertisers are already lining up, with some eight-figure deals being negotiated.

This is the first time a launch date has publicly been revealed. MySpace is counting on the music store as a new growth business - and bringing in the major labels as equity partners helps ensure their long term buy-in. The seemingly successful Hulu business model which brought in News Corp and other content owners last year will set the example.

Music almost certainly plays a part of MySpace's continued dominance of Facebook in the U.S. Market. Facebook continues to rely on iLike for music - MySpace, by contrast, has already had a deep music offering and hosts pages for 5 million artists. MySpace says that 65% of their users embed music on their MySpace pages, and over 5 billion songs are streamed on MySpace each month.

There are still a lot of details that need to be explained about the MySpace music venture, and we still eagerly await announcement about the CEO of the new venture.