Fifteen months after it first said it was going to launch a UK version of its Spinner music blog, AOL (NYSE: TWX) has finally done so. The new site is a carbon copy of AOL’s US Spinner blog, which claims 6.5 million monthly uniques (comScore), but with some more reviews and news of UK artists.
AOL’s focus has shifted from being an ISP megalith to being a content maker and advertising company in the last couple of years. It had launched several niche, standalone blogs, not onerously linked under the AOL.com banner, through its Mediaglow content division. But this is the first UK site to launch under AOL Media, the new name for Mediaglow. AOL Advertising, the new name for Platform-A, will do the ad sales on Spinner UK.
Last we heard, AOL was evaluating whether to launch gadget blog Engadget in the UK – a placeholder URL has existed bearing “coming soon” since at least November.
AOL acquired Spinner.com when it was a music player company in 1999 but later retired it in favour of AOL Radio. AOL’s European music director Nina Vanneck, in the release: “The vision for Spinner UK is to create a destination for passionate music fans beyond the Top 40, with a global pool of bloggers contributing music news across the world.”