MySpace Gets Serious About Events

Here’s a ray of product sunshine in an otherwise overcast MySpace world. Tonight they are launching a new MySpace events and calendar platform that integrates technology from MySpace Music, iLike, Social Plan and Facebook Connect (told you). It includes new tools for Artists to add concert events and allows users to add those events, share them, and even purchase tickets right from MySpace. It’s an elegant weaving of products that plays to a core strength of MySpace – music, and a huge database of event information – around 1 million concert events in 2010 alone. You can see the new MySpace Events page here.

It’s also a huge improvement from the existing event and calendaring apps on MySpace. Here’s what a concert event used to look like on MySpace:

Here’s what an event might look like now, after the new launch:

Users are also encouraged to share events with friends in the MySpace stream, on Facebook or on Twitter. And artists are being given new tools to actually create attractive concert listings. All of these events are aggregated into the users’ MySpace Calendars along with their normal calendar data.

In the coming months, says MySpace, they’ll add additional features around mobile access, concert notifications and movies and DVD releases and premiers.