MySpace announced the rollout of its MySpace Artist Dashboard analytics tool for artists, as well as the ability for users to purchase music via iTunes, as part of its MySpace Music Video initiative.

MySpace Music Video, a new video hub within MySpace Music, offers features including music-video recommendations based on what friends are watching, A-Z video search, a new video player with "Buy" buttons provided as part of Auditude's video-ad-management platform, entire artist music-video catalogs and iLike featuring the MySpace Music Video catalog within all of its partner Websites.

The MySpace Artist Dashboard is available in 17 languages in more than 20 territories.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta spoke with Federated Media Publishing founder and chairman John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where he touched on the changes to MySpace Music and MySpace in general. Some of the highlights, as reported by TechCrunch:

What we're doing with MySpace is what me and (News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch) first talked about. We think it can be the next generation of digital distribution of content on the Web. It's happening through people and not through portals. It's the "socialization of content."

Music is a great example of our socialization of content. Everyone loves music across all demographics. Our music-label relationships are unique, and that gives us content that other networks don't have. MySpace is the only place you can go today to stream all the music you want. And every band out there today has a presence on MySpace.

We're really pleased with where our business is and where it's going. We've always been good at monetizing our business. This is integrated marketing that no one else on the Web does. And we've just scratched the surface. A key going forward is how you measure success. Our business doesn't hinge on any one deal. News Corp. believes that, too.