A post at paidContent says News Corp is working on a music portal as a joint venture with music content providers (as in the four majors). The site would be similar to Hulu, News Corp's video site that is a joint venture with NBC Universal. (In my experiences with Hulu's private beta, I've found it to be a wonderful product. Hopefully a music venture would be just as good.)

Wrote Staci D. Kramer, "MySpace would be a distributer but, like Hulu, the idea would be a mixed portal-distribution experience. Music would be DRM-free and ad supported. No label has signed yet but a source familiar with the situation said that could change in a matter of weeks." Kramer added that no labels have yet signed on but may soon.

MySpace has dabbled in music distribution. Next month, MySpace will offer at no charge the new album by punk legends Pennywise. This new project is obviously on a much larger scale than the Pennywise one-off. I'm guessing the portal would offer limited artists and albums, and it will (at least initially) skew to the emo side of the spectrum.