Record labels come up with innovative solution to industry woes: a website
Jim Carroll
Three of the four major music labels, Universal Music, Sony-BMG and Warner Music, have jumped into bed with MySpace to turn MySpace Music into “an one-stop source for all music, in all its various digital incarnations”. The odd ones out, EMI, will “probably” sign up shortly, meaning all four catalogues will be available via the new service.
Per the New York Times:
Visitors to the site will be able to listen to free streaming music, paid for with advertising, and share customized playlists with their friends. They will also be able to download tracks to play on their mobile devices, putting the new site in competition with similar services like Apple, Amazon and eMusic.
Questions: so what does this deal mean for acts who currently use MySpace but who are not signed to any of the Big Four labels? Will they be able to make use of this “one-stop source” or are MySpace and MySpace Music to be two seperate entities? Are MySpace’s terms and conditions of use going to become more major label-friendly?
What the fuck???
Sorry, let me rephrase that…
No, I can’t. I’ll just say it again. What the fuck???
sounds like it’s gonna be a seperate site? like http://www.myspacemusic.com rather than music.myspace.com?
are they gonna be removing all their music from itunes or anything like that?
it’s gonna be so overloaded with ads that it will be a waste of time i reckon.
all i can say is that this is a great post title!
all i can say is that this is a great post title!
colin – I learned all I know about sarky headlines from The Onion
This is a blatant attempt on the part of the labels to raid what was ostensibly a home for independent artists, but it shows how desperate they are to maintain their declining market power. And the fact that MySpace is willing to let them raid their user base shows that MySpace is not really serious about the independent market. So where does that leave the artists on MySpace, who will now have to cut through even more distractions as the majors spam and shill their artists all over the site? It’s looking bad for MySpace, in my opinion. The labels just don’t like Apple’s deal, they’re greedy and want to charge more money for their subpar product. What matters is that this changes nothing for the artists or the fans, and it may even be worse for both.