There has been some press out there about how Myspace will be opening a music store to compete with iTunes and Amazon but not very much seems to mention the downsides of this deal.
Myspace has been one of the primary ways independent artists get their music out there for people to hear. Having a place to upload your own music for people to go and listen to it has been a huge victory over the years. Roughly 30 million, out of 110 million, people use the music features myspace provides.
The downfall seems to be that the major record labels are the ones benefiting and independent artists are getting left out.
The breakdown:
Myspace and major labels will have this music service that they jointly own and can then set prices as well as set royalties (presumably lower). Promotion gets taken care of by Jamba (news corp owned) and eliminates managers and other PR people.
This seems to be kind of like a facorty adding one machine to do the work of 5 people, and then laying those 5 people off. There are defniietly arguments for every side but chances are this deal won’t be so hot.
Sources: The Register, USAtoday
