MySpace will begin to sell songs this fall with the help of San Francisco-based digital licensing company Snocap, which was founded by former Napster software writer Shawn Fanning. This will be great news for unsigned bands looking for a way to both promote their music while being compensated for their music without signing away their profits to big labels.
The service will be in beta until a wider unveiling closer to the end of this year.
All songs will be sold in MP3 format in label- or musician-created stores. There will be HTML code made available to MySpace users so that they can customize their own stores on their profile pages.
A major selling point is that the labels and musicians themselves will be able to set the prices that their tracks sell for. This is a departure from the flat 99 cent price that Apple’s iTunes has set for the songs it sells. Some in the music industry have cried foul at this set pricing model, arguing that more popular tracks are prevented from making as much as they could with more flexible pricing.
Although signing onto a big time label will probably remain the lofty goal of every small band looking to make it big, this MySpace feature could help them to avoid inequitable contract deals that many bands sign when they are first taken aboard.
Record label EMI is reportedly discussing a deal with MySpace, according to the New York Times. Currently there are no big labels slated to sell music on MySpace.
Although MySpace has not confirmed whether or not it is looking for deals with major labels it is hard to see how they could not be interested in such deals, which figure to be lucrative. It should not be a hard sell either, as music labels would embrace the more flexible pricing and copyright management.
To add to this, Snocap already has distribution agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner Music Group. This could help MySpace’s cause a great deal.
This news comes about a week after Universal Music Group and SpiralFrog partnered to offer free music downloads to its users, so long as they watch online ads delivered their way.
Sources:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=47664
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=
18342&hed=Music+for+Money+at+MySpace
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