Explain to me what's happening with new MySpace Music and with labels' new royalty deal

[koganbot]

MySpace is introducing its new "MySpace Music" today. A new model for listening/marketing music, with humongous amounts of free music streamed online, supported only by visual ads. Question is whether it will challenge iTunes and hasn't already been superseded by YouTube.

Lets you create vast playlists. But I probably won't get a chance to start playing with this until tonight.

Also, a really poor Reuters piece about some deal on online royalty pricing among "record labels, music publishers, songwriters, and online music services." Can't tell from the article what the significance of this is or who/what it will affect. Basically, the problem has been that royalty costs for online streaming have been prohibitively high, making it extremely hard for online radio and Pandora etc. to make a go of it (and of course therefore encouraging yet more people to download illegally or to head to YouTube to hear what they want). So, I don't know if the new rates take care of the problem or not. Remember, the major labels' first impulse since the rise of the 'Net has been to do the wrong thing. So, are they still on their first impulse here, or are they finally - with this and the MySpace deal - seriously taking account of reality?

Also, on first listen the Ne-Yo album has a beautiful sound from start to finish but may not have enough great songs to carry us further than the basic beauty.

Haven't heard the Jazmine Sullivan yet.

Comments

NO

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

from what i'm reading it's still pretty prohibitively priced and worded in a very woolly way:

http://xrrf.blogspot.com/2008/09/us-webcasters-deal-fair-shares-for-all.html

Re: NO

[koganbot]

And - as far as we can tell - that's the site as a whole. So if you have a track of the week, but your business is really a thriving community discussion area, you'll be having to pay one tenth of your entire advertising take to pay for a single tune a week.

Hmmm. Well, this isn't a definitive analysis, but...

But let's say you're Pandora? Or you're a small radio station that's deciding to stream its music online? Does this raise or lower your rates?

Re: NO

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

They should be doing a lower rate for companies with a lower turnover/streaming volume - PRS does different tariffs at present depending on what sort of stuff you're doing with the music (on-demand streaming, downloading, just playing in the background etc) and how much traffic/ad revenue you're getting. Tbh I'm amazed that it's taken the Americans this long to sort something out...

Re: NO

[koganbot]

Tbh I'm amazed that it's taken the Americans this long to sort something out...

Funiest line of the day. We've spent the last eight years (or the last 35, if you want to start with Nixon in the early '70s) not sorting out the economy, why should we do any better with royalties?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Blimey that really is the worst article ever! Our company intranet is more informative than that.

I don't have time to talk in depth about this atm I'm afraid! I assume it means that Myspace & co have struck up proper deals with BMI/ASCAP/RIAA etc, just like Youtube did with PRS.

I know that iTunes has been having MAJOR beef with royalty costs for streaming/downloading (which are sort-of combined for European purposes). It's all very complicated - enough that we have an extra team of people dealing with it all.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I'm betting MySpace Music will instantly crash the internet broswer on the PC down the corridor (it hates ads that use Shockwave/Flash v.7). Let's see...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Oh great. Minimum requirement for all music is now Flash v.9. I can't stream anything any more. F*ck you very much, MySpace. Your glorious revolution will have to carry on without me.

[koganbot]

Well, don't know the system requirements, but Flash Player 9 is free and doesn't take up much space on the hard drive. (But Adobe website seems to be getting overwhelmed today.)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

These are work PCs I'm so I have no permission to install/upgrade anything.

Not that I have any right to complain. I use them too much for non-work purposes as it is. Employees do have some license in this regard but insisting on the right to listen to MySpace Music is probably pushing it :)

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

I don't really know what it's all about, but I've spent an exciting afternoon chasing around MySpace finding albums which my record company own and which another record company has put up online, and gathering evidence so we can BUST THEIR ASSES! Or something.