Myspace is making a comeback

Looks like Myspace is making a comeback. And its savior? The music industry.

Last year when Justin Timberlake announced that he was buying Myspace from Rupert Murdoch along with a partner syndicate for $35 million, all the good Timberlake-referencing jokes about “bringing Myspace back” were used up in about an hour.

But now it looks like he’s actually doing it.

New York Times and Mashable are reporting that Myspace has added 1 million new members in the last month. The additions come with the launch of Myspace’s new music player, which launched in December.

While no one seemed to know exactly what to do with the assets of the former social media giant, they are obviously substantial. Having been bought by Rupert Murdoch for $580 million, Myspace went on to gather a music library of 42 million songs, “eclipsing all other competitors,” the site says. Mashable reports the influx of a million new subscribers in a month may signify that “that services like Spotify — not Facebook or Google+ — may be its real competition.”

How poetically appropriate that Justin Timberlake, who played Sean Parker in “The Social Network,” would go on to own a social network whose main rival may be real-life Sean Parker’s new company, Spotify.

As of now the new Myspace music player doesn’t appear to have a mobile component, which is part of what makes players like Spotify awesome. But hey, there are worse things that Timberlake could have created than a Spotify competitor—a year ago Timberlake’s manager was hinting that Myspace could turn into a platform for another “American Idol” clone.

If this is the way Timberlake is “bringing Myspace back,” it’s fine by us.