Wired's Listening Post, Idolator and others have picked up on the story that Hypebot broke yesterday revealing The Orchard's concerns over indie treatment at MySpace Music. How MySpace and other music 2.0 companies compensate indie artists and labels will play a major role in shaping the
the next iteration of the music industry. Indies have to make money somewhere.
On one hand, it is important to be patient with revenue demands. Some digital distributors have advocated staying away from services like imeem whose payment plans are a bit vague, but labels and artists should not ignore the potential of these new music discovery vehicles. Why not make a shorter deals which can rescinded in a year or so as a payment history develops?
But MySpace Music is a different beast. From launch, it is controlled by major labels and News Corp; both of whom have histories of appreciating the power of indie credibility, but shown no desire to pay for it. The best hope is that indie artists and labels have the fortitude not to sell their stuff on MySpace if they don't get a fair deal.
It will also be interesting to see how competing third party music apps from folks like imeem and Reverb Nation get treated. MySpace's participation in Google's Open Social should mean open, but we'll see...
