The MySpace Record Label Deal Sucks

The MySpace Record Label Deal Sucks

With this deal, MySpace shows once and for all that it doesn't give a damn about independent artists.

MySpace has been around in its current incarnation since 2003. I don't know how many of you remember, but before that it was a part of eUniverse/InterMix Media, a gigantic adware/spyware shop that Eliot Spitzer, he of the whore, sued for illegally installing spyware on users' machines.

We can talk later about exactly how much has changed, what with the general spamminess and sloppiness that continues to define the MySpace experience.

For now, keep in mind that MySpace has been around for 5 years, claiming to be a friend of the independent artist. There are about 4 million artists on MySpace now. (You can see this if you browse by top genres and add up the columns.) Less than 1 percent of them have major label deals.

What exactly has MySpace done for these 4 million artists in the past 5 years? Allow them to put up a page, post songs for listening or free download only, and post some band info. Great.

Oh, and a little more than a year ago, in September 2006—around the time they banned outgoing links in all other Flash applications—they finally introduced a way for independent artists to sell their music on MySpace! Yippee!!!

But what was it? It was a monopoly deal with Snocap, whereby independent artists can use the SnoCap Flash widget to sell their music on MySpace.

And SnoCap is utter bullshit.

If you're a total indie artist, you pay a yearly fee and 39 cents per song and a retail fee of 10 or 15 percent—whichever is larger. If you're on an indie label, you can negotiate some of those terms. If you're on a major label, of course, you can negotiate everything!

Starting to get the picture?

MySpace has tried in the past to defend its utter negligence of independent artists, but I'm not buying it. There's no way crappy deals with SnoCap and T-shirt sales are gonna cut it for independent artists in the twenty-first century.

So, when MySpace announced its deal to sell music for the major labels, with the majors still setting the same terms as they have for the past 80 years, I just had to laugh.

It's a slap in the face to the independent artists who, for better or worse, have made MySpace their home up to this point, and have given MySpace whatever little credibility it has. (Remember, this is a company that got its start installing spyware.)

Not only have the independent artists gotten no love for the past 5 years, but now, the majors—having trouble selling their crappy overpriced product, and looking to colonize the user bases of online networks, come a'knockin' at MySpace's door. And MySpace opens up and says, "Sure, come right on in! We're not really doing anything to sell our independent artists' music to our user base. Have at it! More Akon, T-Pain, and 50 Cent for everybody! Bring your auto-tuners!"

Get the picture?

All the independent artists on MySpace are now officially second-class citizens. They were before, with the MySpace Records label, their "tour", and the crappy SnoCap deal, but now it's official.

When we were starting Metalabel, we wondered for months and months why MySpace didn't just sell music for the independent artists on its site. We fought about it, thought about it, and wrote about it.

But now it's clear that MySpace wants a guaranteed income from the major labels' established artists—even if that is a declining figure, and even if they have to split up the "rent"—and not even 5 years worth of user-generated content, artist uploads, and fan activity on the site, amassing a group of 4 million artists—not even this is enough for them to even consider doing anything for the independent artist.

We used to wonder why they never did anything for the independent artist. Now we know. And now we know that they never will.

Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us  |  Stumble It  |  E-mail to a friend

Rate this blog

Comment on this blog entry