Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace announced on Monday that McDonald's, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures, State Farm, and Toyota have signed on as charter advertisers for its forthcoming MySpace Music service, and will sponsor free album downloads, playlists and other new features. The service is expected to offer MySpace's 120 million users unlimited music streaming, as well as the ability to add an entire playlist of songs to their profiles -- instead of the current single song -- and provide links to purchase DRM-free tracks from Amazon MP3.

Toyota and McDonald's will sponsor a range of free music downloads, while Sony Pictures will take over branding of the new user profile playlist, and State Farm "will have a rotational presence among all pages."

MySpace has so far signed up Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music (NYSE: WMG) as partners in the joint venture, but has announced no deals yet with EMI or any independent labels.

MySpace Music, which MySpace president of sales and marketing Jeff Berman called "our biggest initiative since we launched MySpace itself," will also potentially launch without a CEO, as the company has been unsuccessful thus far in its six-month executive search.

Related Links:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080915005703/en

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/myspace-cozies.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10041209-93.html